If you are running LINUX on hardware that struggles with GNOME and KDE or if you woul
 

continuing:

would a user interface that does not attempt to mimic Windows what would I use?

What is your hardware and what distribution are you using?

The lightweight window managars that I think I hear about the most are XFCE and FVWM and Fluxbox. Check out this site: http://www.junauza.com/2008/08/20-mo...-x-window.html

Try fluxbox.

Try window maker http://www.windowmaker.info/
I have been using it in place of Gnome and Kde for long. The reason I moved to it was speed and I didn't need all those jingle bells that Gnome has to offer.

I've got a couple of lower specced boxes at home and have found LXDE works very well on them. I just did a standard Mepis 8 install on them (So they do run KDE 3 OKish...) and then did an aptitude install lxde.

If you don't want Windows-like, just try any plain Window Manager (no desktop environment). I use the Openbox window manager and tint2 panel (because Openbox does not come with a taskbar).

It really does depend on your hardware. If you want a lightweight window manager rather than a full desktop environment, it doesn't get much lighter (or much uglier IMHO) than twm. I was pretty happy with icewm on my AMD K6-300 laptop (64MB RAM, 4GB HDD)

XFCE based Ubuntu called Xubuntu or Dream Linux using XFCE or LXDE based Ubuntu called Lubuntu are all light weight.
It also depends a lot on personal preference. I like XFCE but some hate it. So it has to do with a lot of personal choice as well. Even a full distribution like Debian with XFCE or LXDE should be fine just make sure you do not run services you do not need.

One good thing to know is that TWM comes as part of Xorg.

I, for example, use it when testing if Xorg works right before going further, or if I break my normal desktop somehow.

With Fedora, you need the xorg-x11-twm package; not sure if it's installed by default