[wplug] laptop distro suggestions

[Brian W. Snyder]

Aroon Pahwa wrote:
> Hey everyone,  I got an IBM X40 a couple months ago and I've decided I
> cant live with windows.
> 
> I'm really really new to the whole linux community and especially all
> the various distros so anytime i go hunting i feel kind of
> overwhelmed.  it sounds like you can take almost any distro and mold
> it to what you need, however, im looking for something that doesn't
> take too much customization as i don't have much time or know how.
> 
> the most important things to me are that the gui is very user friendly
> and looks damn good (gotta show off to friends right?), that i get a
> lot of power management options (ive heard past kernels had no cpu
> throttling options, etc so you got terrible battery life compared to
> running windows), and that (of course) it supports all my hardware.
> 
> so far ive been looking at ubuntu and ive heard a lot of people say
> its perfect for a laptop and that most hardware just works right off
> the bat (yay).  ive also been looking at gentoo since ive been happy
> with my past experience with gentoo and i have a friend who has set up
> a laptop successfully with gentoo and get comparable battery life to
> his windows install.  ive also heard slackware is a good choice.'
> 
> i'm pretty sure i know i want to run the 2.7.8 kernel as ive heard it
> solves a lot of graphical and HID issues with IBM laptops.  im also
> really attracted gentoo's portage because it makes package management
> so darn easy, but i don't even know how well other distro's handle
> packages or how well other package managers like apt-something work. 
> all i know is rpm hell is a pain and im pretty sure i dont want to run
> fedora core 2 (i use it at work on a laptop and im not a big fan).
> 
> all suggestions and info are much appreciated!  thanks =]
> 


A good site for reading up on others' experiences:

   http://www.linux-laptop.net




    Brian