Best OS for Dell Latitude C800
 

New to GNU/Linux community. Have Dell Latitude C800 I picked up for $5.00 @ garage sale. Windows XP currently installed works fine, but looking for optimal Linux OS for this unit. Tried installing SUSE 11.2, Gentoo, Freespire, Debian, Vector, Knoppix & Ubuntu w/o satisfactory results. Any suggestions from you good folks w/experience? I understand Slackware might do the trick, but remember I'm a newbie. :-)

What was unsatisfactory about your results specifically? It's likely you'll have to do at least some tweaking due to it being a laptop. My basic recommendation would probably be Mint or Debian depending on your specific needs. Mint is by far the easier of the two.

I have a couple of old Dell laptops with similar specs. IMHO you should be looking at Puppy, SliTaz, DSL, Tinycore, etc. if performance is a concern. But you can install any of the mainstream distros if you're willing to tweak and/or wait around for apps to load.

Got Fedora 12 installed just fine on my ancient Dell Latitude D600 :D

What did you not like about gentoo? Despite the 'mare of compiling on such a slow system, I have it on a similar spec laptop whirring away nicely.

But yes, if you tell us what you weren't happy about and a bit more on what you're looking for I'm sure we can suggest something. Slackware isn't what I'd go with for a newbie, its quite idiomatic which makes it a tad harder to get used to

I have a Dell latitude C800 myself and I prefer to use a stripped down version of Debian Linux with LXDE.