I've looked at various sites that sell Linux systems and most are very expensive. So I thought why not buy a cheap laptop and install Linux myself? I was wondering if anyone has use a Gateway ML6720 with it on before? I found this one

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...720%2bNoteBook

and one user review said that he put OpenSUSE 10.3 and Debian because the comp was to slow for Vista and that Linux worked fine, but I'm concerned about where to get all the appropriate drivers to make everything work like it would normally. Anyone have any advice?

I am running Debian Etch on a Gateway 7330GZ laptop with 512 MB of ram, and it is running beautiful, better than when it was running XP Pro. I am also running Beryl, and it also works beautifully with the built-in Intel video chipset and shared memory. It identified all peripherals, and I only had 2 issues I had to work out after the install.

First was the wifi; the Broadcom chipset was identified, and was being loaded. However, I tried installing the firmware using fwcutter, and was getting errors. Finally I found this site which helped me clear this up:

http://www.debiantutorials.org/content/view/153/213/

I downloaded the drivers manually from his site and ran fwcutter, and the wireless started right up.

The second issue I had was with sound. Again, it took me a while, but I finally found the answer. The alsa mixer has external amplifier selected by default, so sound was being routed to the external amplifier output (laptop doesn't have one) instead of the built-in speakers. The problem is that the external amplifier option is not displayed by default. In the alsa mixer, selecting the external amplifier to be shown in the switches displays the option, and unchecking that cleared up the sound issue.

Aside from those two issues, the install went smooth, and the laptop works perfectly.

HTH