Slackware 12 is rocking on my Vaio VGN-B100B

Just installed Suse 10.3 on my dv1000 everything seems to work but the wireless button and QuickPlay.

I've had good success with Mepis 7, Mandriva, and Pclos (and offspring including Sam, Gnome, and Granular). They handle wireless well.

I have a Gateway MX6445 and I installed Debian Etch (when it was still in testing 2.6.18-3-k7) and everything but wireless and the media slot worked out of the box. Ndiswrapper took care of the wireless. I think around kernel 2.6.20 the media slot worked, and 2.6.23 the native b43 drivers worked. I would try Sidux and see how that runs.

Any modern linux distro will be fine for a laptop.
I am using Sidux on my laptop. Works very well!

I have a dell inspiron 9100 with Mandriva 2008.0 installed. Everything works great.

That's not technically true. Some distro's don't detect laptop specific hardware correctly (such as HD audio and rebranded wifi and GFX chips).
Given that some distro's automatically load the desktop manager, if the GFX chip is incorrectly set it can cause the whole distro to fail to load using the default set ups.

Granted even the more awkward of distros can by modded to get around various laptop specific issues, but given that some other distros (Archlinux for example) work "out of the box", it hardly seems worth spending weeks of your life hacking one which doesn't.

FRIDAY, APRIL 17th 2009

The laptop I would get for MY SELF to turn into Linux box Powerhouse:
I have seen MSI Laptops under 1000bux with 9600GT ddr3/Radeon 45XXHD 17 screen SLI and Intel dual and quad core (weekends).
1000 bux for a laptop that has NO garbage parts pfff.

Now for hardware:
Chose Intel over AMD (heat in small tight space-draw your own conclusions as of april - 2009)
Chose KDE over gnome (even thought I am running GNOME and its adequate for me)
Software:
I am a CONSTANT Player of OLD pc games, Dude's and Dudette's let me tell you WINE has run ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I have thrown at it!, try running CWG2 in VISTA, GOOD LUCK buddy, Linux did it for me.
Wind#$% wont install over LINUX
So Install LINUX first.
NOTICE: The thing attracts cute geeky chicks.
Chose a distro that's right for you means:
Are you going to use it for Entertainment, games, ripping, internet TV?
(ME to)
Are you going to use your laptop for work?
For multemedia=Kubuntu (KDE version of UBUNTU)
for work chose a small and simple distro or SAME DISTRO YOU USE AT WORK.

AMD likes to HEAT UP and heat is the worst enemy of small enclosed spaces.
Intel is better with drivers but not by much, I am perfectly happy running Linux on my 14.1 acer 4530-5350 (AMD) running Linux Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid latest non Betta kernel.

Latest NVIDIA drivers meant to compete on a micr$ level against RADEON has limited support for Linux, wind***s seems to outperform us (What?!, its true), never the less I still get better FPS on outdated drivers playing Americas army in UBUNTU then its 2nd rate competitor, lets call it the monopoly.

P.S Dont take my word for it, dont take theirs either, DO YOUR RESERCH
P.S.S Can I refund my copy of WI&*(&^s? its watching and logging my every, when it shuts down it saves everything and hides it FROM ME.

If some distros don't detect laptop specific hardware correctly you can solve this problem yourself. I advice Gentoo. You can optimize and customize Gentoo for any application or need.

This site sux, after typing for an hour I spell checked it and everything disapears.

My $0.02

Slackware 12.2 slams it on Dell D400, D600 and D610's Been running Mandriva 2008.1 on an IBM R51 and it too is solid.

I say CrunchBang-Lite-8.04 or Wolvix.
Goblinx, Slitaz, DSL, and Tinycore also good.