Hey I'm new to Linux, just got Mandrake installed on my desktop but won't see to work on my laptop startx auth errors...now i could spend a lot of time and try to fix it but i think since there's a world of linux distro's out there I thought I would try another. Slackware didn't work either btw....here's my spec's on my laptop.
Dell inspiron 1150
P4 2.8
768 ram
40G HD
graphics controller is an Intel(R) 82852/82855 GM/GME

Any ideas on what distro i should switch to would be great.
I figure here I would get some unbias help.

Mandrake will work fine on your laptop, you just picked the wrong display during setup. Here is a web site that will help you on your journey. http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html

Oh the fastest way to get help is to search. Go to the main fourm page and search for laptop distro as this has been asked alot.

Thank I'll check that out!!!

MEPIS (2003.10)

The newer versions are probably every bit as good.

I just spent the last two weeks doing nothing but trying distros that will run on an old Dell Optiplex GXi w/128M ram, 4G drive. Pretty much stock.

Tried Vector SOHO 4 (almost worked), Vector 4.3 (not), DeliLinux (not), College (a bad college joke), blah, blah. What a freakin' nightmare!

Then I tried MEPIS. I just started installing it about 2 hrs ago and the machine is up and running. Haven't checked it all out yet. I'm sure there'll be some tweaks yet.

I've also used Mandrake since about 7.1. I had 10 Community installed on an HP Pavilion 8860 1GHz Atholon w/512M. Not bad. Now I have WhiteBox Linux installed on it. Very nice. It's a clone of Redhat Enterprise Linux ES which I just installed on a Dell PowerEdge 2300. It's running as a server at a client's location. Also very nice.

Long story short, give MEPIS a try.

Good luck.