I am about to install Linux on my HP Laptop (see my topic in laptop section). I was wondering: what is the fastest environment for Linux. I am only familiar w/ KDE and Gnome, but I am sure there are others. I want something that is very functional, but doesn't hog my system resources.

slackware is very streamlined.. but you have to have some CLI background...
i've been running slackware for about 4 years, and its a manual process, but it is very fast, and has a lot ov advantages, IMHO over redhat and mandrake, which seem to use a lot more system resources..
if i can be ov any assistance, let me know...

BTW.. slack 8-10 all come with KDE and Gnome as installed Desktop environments...
if you want.. you can also install others.. but it requires a bit ov tweaking on your .xinitrc .. i have a little experience with this, so feel free to ask, if you want...
-sg

If you want lighter and faster, but still functional and easy to configure, I'd try XFCE4. Its got lotsa tools and toys, but it'll run on much slower hardware than KDE and even Gnome will, by a long shot. If you want less turned on by default, you're best off with Slack or Debian (or Maybe Mandrake), than you would be with Suse or Fedora. These are just my personal observations, though.


One other thing that I have observed is that if you don't run a Desktop Manager like KDM, GDM, or XDM, then your system will be a lot more responsive (as in starting X with "startx" instead of clicking on a pretty login box)

Vectordrake has a point about the desktop managers...
If you want a light environment, first thing to have on mind is to resist the toys (I'm not good resisting), but depending on the taste of the user, Window Maker and Black Box are good alternatives. They are not the fastest environments, but they are lighter than KDE or Gnome, and have nice look & feel...
In the end it's just matter of taste...
I'm running Gnome 2.8 on a PII 233MHz - 160 ram laptop and it works nice.

Just read this review of Xfce today. Haven't used it ever, but it seemed to match what you were asking about, from what I remember.

I have been looking at Yoper Linux recently, how does it compare to slack?

Xfce is definitely what you're looking for. Grab the latest 4.2 beta installer, it's very stable.

so, I install my distro, and then do install xfce from kde or gnome?

If your distro provides installable packages for Xfce, all you have to do is install it. Xfce should then show up as one of the desktop managers available on the GUI login screen. If not, it's a bit trickier. As someone else said above, you will need to tweak your X Window initialization file (~/.xinitrc) to invoke Xfce.

And yes, you could install Xfce from within KDE or GNOME or whatever else, though it's probably easier to do it from the command line.

Sounds good. So would Yoper linux + xfce be a fast combination?