In your machine each and every distro will run.

In terms of supporting most notebooks openSUSE is slightly better than others.

But more important is, what distro you are used to.
Take that one.

KDE, Gnome, and Unity are Desktop Environments not Window Managers. Gnome3 and Unity use Mutter as the Window Manager, Gnome2 uses Metacity, I have no idea what KDE uses. Enlightenment is a Window Manager.

In KDE Kwin is the Windows Manager.
LXDE and Xfce are also good Desktop Managers.GTK base and both light weight good for older system with basic graphic display. Or good for people who like simplicity.

Other windows manager are:
FluxBox
OpenBox
IceWM
TWM
Compiz
WindowsMaker
AfterStep
And at Whole lot more for all tastes.
Good luck to you.

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I have been using Ubuntu on my Laptops for years - recently 11.04 is pretty nice and easy to set up and use. I would make sure you DISABLE the proprietary drivers if they pop up after you update - has tendency to wreck havoc with the wireless network adapter. Again I have used it on both Toshiba Satellite (old one atheros card) and HP DV7. I had tried mint for a minute and it seems no different - again it really depends on how you intend on using Linux with your laptop will help on which Distribution to use. For example, BT 5 now is on Debian previously Slackware - great for Pen testing and other Network/Web exercises. Ubuntu is pretty much a good all around and it comes with some great media packages if you like video, pics and the like. Ultimately Fedora is like RedHat which is a industry standard so its basically like Ubuntu with a different package manager.

Wow thanks guys I have been away from this thread for awhile, but these last few posts have given me some more insight into it, right now I'm messing around with Ubuntu 11.10 and Mint 11 on Live Boot Discs and I am not sure which one to pick they both run very well. Thanks for all your help guys!

I should say that mint is actually another ubuntu and I made me exhausted after just few minutes.
I think if your decision has been constraint to just these options, ubuntu will be winner. But If you want pick a pace forward, go test another lightweight distribution like poppy and so on.

Actually if you have any interest in learning anything about Linux I would recommend mint.

Like Erfankam said they are both essentially ubuntu. The difference is the Desktop environment.

To my knowledge, and I could be wrong because I don't personally use ubuntu, the current LTR only had Unity as a desktop environment.

Unity is very colorful and so easy to use that your grandmother could probably figure it out.

The problem is that it's interface can be quite crippling to experienced users, and I would assume this would also make it difficult to actually learn linux. It's also really slow.

You could always change the Desktop environment, but if you're going to do that anyway, you might as well pick something that already has it.

Here is a breakdown of popular DE's and WM, and their uses (this is of course, only my opinion.)

Unity or Gnome 3:
-Good if you have no interest in learning
-Good if you don't mind sacrificing performance for something that looks good

KDE or Gnome 2:
-In my opinion good compromises of performance and elegant looks. People that were raised on windows will be pleased by the graphical appearance.
-They are not the fastest options, but much faster than Unity or Gnome 3
-They are much easier to modify and use at a more advanced level, but generally they should handle most tasks for you.

XFCE and LXDE:
-Slightly faster than those mentioned above
-Slightly less bells and whistles, but still generally easy to migrate to. XFCE is one of my favorites.

Openbox and Flux Box:
-Take a little bit of getting used to, many tasks have to be done manually or with external programs.
-Once it's set up It is amazingly fast even compared to XFCE

Sorry about the long winded letter, People always go back and forth about what distro is best. In reality As long as you stick with a stable build (I recommend Debian derivatives or cent os) The important part is the Desktop environment, or window manager.

Also, there is a lot more that I didn't mention. These are just some of the more popular ones.

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