Sorry, but...

*bump*

Any ideas on which distros (free ones) might have the kind of hardware compatibility I need here?

I recommend Fedora to you,

This may be a dumb point but when I installed Mandrake 10 on my laptop it did install acpi by default. If I didn't want it I had to tell it so at boot. Are you sure that it wasn't already there anyhow? I ask becuase often systems do what you describe when involved in long tasks where you don't touch the keyboard becuase they go into power saving mode thinking nothing is going on. Either acpi or apm running would do that during a kernel compilation. And unfortunatly you may find that acpi won['t work anyhow. Its been tough getting it to work in Linux exactly right becuase so many lame manufactures like Compaq write bois code that doesn't exactly match the standard but may match WInXP quirks.

But a couple of other recomendations. Suse is probably the best linux for anybody who doesn't necessarily wanna geek out al the way. I've tried about everything and find it and slackware to be the best. (Sorry, I hate Fedora. It sucks The newest Suse is particularly good.

Another thought, you can try Mepis. Its newest release is still in beta but its nearly finished and very good. The handy thing here is that it boots up as a live cd so you can actually see if everything works right away or not. Knoppix will do this as well but is more designed to just be a live cd. http://www.distrowatch.com/ is a great resource for where to get what.

well, RedHat and Suse do have some rivarly going on....hehhehe, but at least Redhat doesn't attemp to make brain dead people want to use Linux, like Suse does with all their brainless gadgetry.

I really woudn't necessarily want everybody in the world to use Linux like Windows is used.... all extremes are bad.... I believe that at this point there is still no balance betweeen microsoft and any other OS, however the balance will come slowly but surely. I think there should be a balance between people using Linux, Mac, and Windows....not that those are the only OS in the world...but 3 is a nice number, hehehe.

Actually, just out of coincidence I downloaded Fedora the night before you posted that and I've now got it up and running - it works perfectly ^_^ ACPI support (not full ACPI support, but enough that my computer doesn't catch fire - it stays nice and cool, which is all I really want), and both the mouse and keyboard work. Heh.

I have to admit that it's not exactly what I want in a Linux distro - I'm no Linux expert as I'm sure you can tell, but I wouldn't really call myself a total newb either, and Fedora seems almost a bit too dumbed-down. And the lack of built-in NTFS mounting support (kernel that comes with Fedora doesn't support NTFS filesystem) is really, really annoying (not to mention confusing), but I guess I can try to compile that in.

No matter, though - it works. Wee. Now I can stop using Windows (except for gaming.)

Thanks for all your help.

well, my friend Dag....I'm very happy for you!, and congrats on getting Linux to install well!

In what you say hoever, lies exactly what I meant about Redhat not being super brainless...it doesn't come with NTFS support and I have also a NTFS partition with WinXP...so you have to configure it into the kernel, recompile it, and install it again!....and that is definately not brainless, hehehe, in Suse I would not be surpised if it comes enabled. :-p

Oh Dag, and if you don't even want to use Windows for games, go and get GEDEGA 4.0, it's the newest version of WineX

here is the link: http://www.transgaming.com/news.php?newsid=119

I just installed Starcraft and counter strike on my laptop!, they run super awesome!!!!!!!!!,
now I don't run Windows, at all.....Muahahhahahahahahahaah!!