If it's an older laptop that doesn't require ACPI, then I'd go with Ubuntu. It's a really nice distro that's every fast on older machines, but it lacks in ACPI suport. APM worked okay, but not reliably. If you require ACPI or have a newer machine, then I'd suggest Mandrake. It can be a bit bloaty, but IMHO, it's the most laptop freindly distro out there.

Jeremy

well I have 2 laptops currently one is an HP n5435 which is running SUSE 9.1 with no issues the other is an emachine m6805 with the amd 64 bit proc. I will say that in all the laptops I have ever owned which has been allot. HP and IBM has worked allot better by far out of the box with SUSE, REDHAT, and slack for my laptops also the support your able to get from the companies is by far the best. The laptop that has failed the most is the emachine and there customer support totally blows ass. so in short to rank the laptops I would say

1. IBM

2. HP

3. DELL






4. Toshiba

I have 2 Dell Inspiron series laptops (5000 and 8200) bot h of them successfully work for me under Slackware 8.1 and up.

I don't understand why do you say that some distros don't work under your laptops ... I'm sure all do if you install and configure them correctly.

I have Suse 9.2 running on a Thinkpad T40. This ran everything right out of the box just as everyone is reporting. I tried FC3 and Mandrake and could not figure out for the life of me how to get my wireless card to work (newbie here).

I have AMd Athlon XP-M 2800+

Kanotix works flawlessly here its my #1 distro
FRugalware works fine its also my #2

Mandrake i installed but after it went into linux (to go into MDK) after installation was done it wouldnt do nothing

Mepis stays stuck in 50% and just freezes after that
Pro MEpis beta2 its not booting up anymore

VEctorLInux worked fine but I dnt like the slapt-get mirrors it uses its slow, they need some type of apt-get or pacman or even urpmi or emerge lol cuz its really slow even when the mirrors are fast other mirrors get slow or something or maybe I needed to use it for more than 1 day

if I were you I would get SUSE 9.1 its like an old faith ful dog or car it just runs and runs. I think also you should get a full listing of all of your hardware and check to make sure its all compatible. If all else fails install a form of BSD they will run on almost anything.

On my HP I dont have a wireless card but when I get my replacement emachine (had so many problems they are replaceing it) I will be DL and installing SUSE 9.2 and will give a post on the wireless working or not.

I dont really like rpm distros, I like Ark Linux and Mandrake , well I dont use old versions I'm a cutting edge freak, if my pc is fast I only run cutting edge .. But probably Suse 9.2 , I'll get the mini installation what u think? I had suse 9.1 once it was my third distro I used , I'm a n00b since nov 2004 and I had it on my old pc Celeron 634mhz 256mb but the power supply died on the last week of december and even my laptop from sept 2004 the hard-drive got damaged on dec 31st wow . but on monday i got the new hd took damn long too and i replaced it and everything been OK

I use SUSE 9.1 on my day to day laptop and it runs fine no problems complaints really. there are some issues I have running some of the web based videos but thats more from being lazy to fix then not being able to fix.

Next week some time I will be upgrading my day to day laptop to SUSE 9.2 pro 1. cause I can DL it for free and 2. has better laptop support and 3. my clients need to see me run the latest product I support and sell services for.

I just installed Suse 9.2 prof on a older Thinkpad 600 (2645 I think) with a dlink dwl-650 wireless card. I had absolutely no problems whatsoever! Everything, including the wireless card worked right out the gate. I also had a MS optical mouse connected, which was also detected and worked.

I built the laptop for my mother in-law who is just getting into computers for the first time and she loves using it. She only uses firefox, Openoffice, and evolution at the moment but she loves it.

I have experience working with both suse pro and SLES so maybe I am partial but frankly speaking this install was one of the easiest I have ever done, including windows.

The only thing that took a little configuring was the screen resolution. IBM used a neo-magic card and it defaulted to 800 x 600. I was able to change that at the end of the install with no issues.

After using the laptop for a while and showing my M-I-L how to use it. I have to say that the performance of the laptop is okay for 300 Mhz processor and 160 mb of ram. However it takes quite a while to boot, I say about 7 - 8 min in total.

Hope this helps

I never heard of anybody building laptops lol

LOL -- Great observation -- IBM actually built the laptop -- I just made it kick ass usable!!

Have tried ProMEPIS, SimplyMEPIS, and Linspire all on my old Gateway PII333 laptop. All have worked flawlessly except for the sound.

Mepis setup and automatically connected my WiFi card to my Router..... D-Link DWL-650 Rev.M

Linspire was fine as well, just ran too slow on my old laptop. And also had an issue with the sound.

I hear some laptops choose their distro(s)

Try slackware 10 works perfectly for me

Ahhhh