I don't use GNOME...

You may want to try Kubuntu. I've tried several distros (Debian, Mandriva, Fedora, Knoppix), and of all of them, Fedora was the slowest one. I tried both KDE and GNOME, but I like KDE better. What you need to do is pick a user-friendly distro first (like Mandriva), install BOTH KDE and GNOME, and try both of them to see which one you like better. Fedora is praised as being user-friendly, but Mandriva is much better in that department. I just can't honestly recommend Fedora...

FYI, I started with Debian. I used it for my first year of my Linux days...
The reason I stopped using it was that it developed too slowly.
Then again, I was a 17-year-old kid who was too stubborn to give up (I was FURIOUS with Micro$oft at the time and wanted to use Linux so badly and I wanted to learn the internals, too.) Basically, I was a hardcore geek who wanted to dump Windows and use a good OS. I am proud of that start. I now use Ubuntu because it's like Debian but much more stable and much more up-to-date.

I've used Linux for two years now.

not to take a shot at FC laying down.

I have tried Mandriva, Knoppix, Linspire, Gentoo and Fedora Core.

Also, Gnome and KDE.

My choice, FC4 with Gnome.

Ubuntu is the greatest thing for first-time Linux-ers that there has ever been.

I agree. Ubuntu has come a very long ways since it's inception - it even configured and installed my Intel Pro Wireless 2100 on my laptop during the install! That has never happened with any other distro.

I don't use Ubuntu much now, it's almost to the point of being no fun - once it's set up, there's nothing to tinker with. Be sure to go to ubuntuguide.org to get it configured properly. Now, I mainly work on Debian Etch... and dabble a bit with Slackware running Dropline Gnome (I love Gnome).

I ordered 5 Ubuntu CD's and gave away a bunch to friends and relatives - and have gotten a lot of "Thank You!"'s back. For a beginner, I would recommend nothing else.

Good Luck and ask questions!

My advice is that you should stay away from Fedora core 4.
Uninstal it and install Mandriva or Suse. Either of them are faster than FC. Besides, they are easier for newbs. One encouraging word: It is really a hit or a miss when installing Linux on a Laptop, especially when there is very new hardware not supported or partially supported in Linux. You will learn something from this experience, I believe: I mean, positive things, because this will force you to better understand how Linux and hardware work.

as alot of ppl here are saying, Ubuntu will give you at least some idea of what linux can be.

there is a reason why it has taken off so well, and that is because it is *bloody good*

i would suggest moving on to arch after ubuntu simply because i like it, and i hate long boot times (arch boots in 20 seconds for me, straight in to the kde logon manager, faster than xp!!)

On an aside - I've been trying to like Ubuntu. I've been running it on a VMWare session in my XP system for about a week now. (I have two 20" monitors, so I can have a VM Sesion full-screen in one.)

Though the file manager is really nice and the menu is uncluttered (compared to SUSE) I am really getting frustrated by the installation routine. For example I wanted to install Java 1.5 instead of 1.4, so I went to the installer thingy (apt?) and couldn't find Java. Looking on the internet I find a series of instructions, which all simply blow up in my face.

By contrast, on SUSE, I simply go to YaST and uninstall 1.4 and install 1.5. I'm done.

Maybe it is somehting I'm missing, but it appears counter-intuitive.

For reference, malaka is Greek for "asshole" (though it can be used in a chummy way).

I will say I personally dislike Ubuntu and Gnome - but I have recently installed it on every compy in a lab full of aging computers that previously gave themselves hernias just opening XP (Typical: 300/500MHz, 64MB RAM, <10GB HD, etc...). It's very popular, which, in Linux, is the same as saying it's very well supported.

That said, Linux on laptops is always trickier; this is because laptops are more likely to have strange hardware.

I do want to echo what's said about Fedora Core; Fedora comes from Red Hat, and the two systems are most frequently used in corporate environments where an admin sets everything up and users are just supposed to work on them.

Ubuntu, again, is very user-friendly; if you want a truly hardcore, down-to-the-wire Linux install, try Vector Linux, which simplifies the process of using no-frills Slackware. Middle ground would be to pick a distro with a good package manager, such as APT or YUM (neither of which I'm the least bit familiar with, except that they make installing software simpler than under Windows).

Also, I've got a simple guide to some command-line basics that helped me loads when I was first buggering about on Linux (and I'd never used a terminal before at all). I've got a Gmail address with username prothall if you want it. It's pretty concise.

The most useful bit? Installing from source is done so:
tar -xvzf thingy.tar.gz
cd thingy
./configure
[login as root; you may use su or put sudo in front of the commands]
make
make install

Does Fedora ever leave the Beta stage?

Seriously though - if X is really that slow, it's usually because you're either running with the generic VESA X server, or you are not running DRI with the specific X server. Can you post the output of xdpyinfo here please?

Try Suse 10. It sounds like most of your problems are related
to video card drivers. They can be solved but you need to be
prepared to work through the difficulties. Have you ever
installed windows on a PC as opposed to buying a PC with
windows pre-installed. You can have just as many problems
installing Windows as you can have with Linux.

Windows makes more more sense when you are used to it. However once you get used to Linux you realise how much better thought out it is (although it is also far from perfect).

(Please note that I am also a noob, and am speaking from my limited experience regarding the following): The first thing I would do is uninstall F.C. I started with FC and hated it. The only good thing I can say about it is that the install is easy. It is as you have said "slow and bloated".
From FC I moved to Gentoo, which is fantastic but very hard to get going right for a noob. Gentoo does have excellent manuals though that guide you through just about everything.
You learn heaps in the install process and end up with a fantastic system. However if you just want something that works without you having to put in any effort don't bother with Gentoo.

I haven't tried Ubuntu but it does have a good rep (and may be the best choice for a laptop). However I would be tempted to recommend Kubuntu instead as I think Gnome is horrid. Also regardless of which distro you end up with give Xfce a try (it's a great lightweight DE) rather than KDE (good but bloated) or (shudder)..Gnome.

As for those that keep saying they can get Linux to boot faster than Linux (in ...secs), have you ever had XP working right? You all mention boot times of around 20 secs to get to KDE user screen... if set up properly XP goes from power on to GUI up and going in less than that (and my computer is not that flash).

Best of luck with Linux, and even if you give up now, try again later (before shelling out $$$ for Vista for example). Linux is great.
Finally I would leave an old version of windows on your drive and dual boot, there are always some programs that you need to run that are Window$ only. (for me it's the cd's that come with my university text books).

Will have to retract my statement about windows boot up speed. I made an estimation and was wrong. I just timed my system and it takes 24 sec to boot into windows...so Linux wins...but not by the amount people would have you believe.

i wasn't saying that linux boots faster than windows. quite the opposite in fact. but that is in general. i have just found arch on my setup is increadably quick! but thats not to say xp is slow to boot. that is one of the things that i think MS have got absolutely right!

(cant get ndiswrapper working tho.... which sucks... and no one is replying to my thread)

I misunderstood. I just get so sick of people going on about how crap Windows is. I don't love Windows either, but do people really think putting something else down is going to make what they use better. Everyone should strive to do the best they can not try to get ahead by beating others back (otherwise you are doing just what MS does!). While Windows most certainly has some problems, I get the impression that the people who keep abusing it haven't used it for quite some time. It is much better that it used to be and XP is pretty good, much more stable than FC running KDE for example.

Interesting observation. I put down windows regularly, simply because of the downgrade to XP from 2K. I still run 2K at home on one of my machines but am forced into this horrid, bloated, over-friendly XP at work. (I keep expecting the fscking paperclip to come up and poke me in the eye - "Hi, I'm talking clippy and I don't like you...")

I'm actually writing this from the XP box under Firefox, while running SUSE in a VM session compiling cvsnt and listening to Husker Du on my SUSE laptop. The more I use KDE, the less I like XP. Not a day goes by where I don't think, "why doesn't windows do that?" Compared to the elegant Konqueror, the Explorer shell just seems weak. Let's not even get into how often things (Word XP, Archibus, SamSpade...) crash on my XP system, whereas I can seem to only really crash Amarok (beta) on my laptop.

I don't even want to get into the whole mess with drive letters. It is funny to think that - jus t a year ago - I thought drive letters were superior to the /mnt/MyCoolShare concept.

Now, do I think Linux is perfect? No. Far from it. In fact, one of my taglines is, "Linux - it sucks less than Windows."

As for a boot time, Linux is known to boot slower than any given comparable Windows system. This is not a defect of the OS, rather a choice to overlook boot times since most Linux machines have been - and continue to be - servers. Unllike Windows Workstation 2003, these servers don't need to be rebooted everytime a patch is applied. There are a number of offshoot distributions which are - in fact - focusing on the boot time issue. My laptop, for example, takes a horrid amount of time to load. Granted, I'm running Apache, MySQL, Postfix and a host of other services, but still...

One of the project I was reading about yesterday and may change my laptop to is SUPER, sponsered by Novell: http://en.opensuse.org/SUPER It focuses on improving boot times similar to Windows by running tasks in || rather than serial.