I am planning to get a Laptop, and I want to install Linux besides the terribly slow xp. (need to show my friends huv much faster the laptop can be ). I dont know which one is best for laptops. Presently I am using Mandrake.. I heard redhat is more robust. But presonally i find mandrake handy.

reg,
Shyam

Well, this has been almost the frequently asked question amongst others, "Which linux distro is good".

Me I have used SuSe, Slackware, Gentoo, knoppix, Mandrake & Redhat. But of all these Os'es Mandrake and Redhat are the best taste for me. Though Mandrake is good I do not think it can compete Redhat. Mandrake as a good GUI but it may sometimes disappoint while using it as a server and its manuals are a little bit limited.

Try Redhat and you'll see. Easy Installation, Customised Installation...by the way there's an option for Laptop Installation which will allow you to install very many laptop utilities such as hibernation, battery, etc.....

And if you want your laptop to be so quick though I can't garantee this to you since its gonna depend on the hardware of your laptop such as the memory and processor but Redhat will learn so quick on any i386 pentium II and above machine with more than 256mb of ram. Otherwise go try your luck buddie.

I have had many distributions of Linux on both my HP and my PPC. I have had no trouble installing Red Hat or any other main stream distribution on my HP but the PPC is a different story. For one; there is a limit to the distributions for mac PPC's. Yellow Dog rivals Red Hat for easy but the support is not there yet. Gen-too is my current project and I have to say it has been a struggle I love. PPC's will have better hardware and will run faster (in my opinion) but Devil laptops are more popular and have more support, but don't let that stop you from getting a good machine.

I am currently running Mandrake 10 on my laptop (Celeron (Coppermine 1GHz) with 128MB ram) and it is pretty snappy! Battery indicators etc are all working 100% and the performance isn't the best, but absolutely acceptable!

I recently installed mandrake 10 on my dell inspiron 5150 (p4 3.02 1gb ram) and it runs flawlessly. I just installed Unreal Tournament 2004 and it flys just as it would when I ran it on WinXP. anyway, I need to add the laptop/portability package, as of right now I have no battery management or ability to suspend/hibernate.

if anyone has some links I'd be a happy man.

-D