Best Linux Distro for a Laptop

[Asher]

It's that time of year again, with school coming up and the need for Linux on my laptop (dual-boot with Windows XP, of course).

I just completed surgery on the laptop, imaging my old 40GB drive over the network and replacing it with a new 100GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (which is kickass, I may add). I'm partitioning 40GB for Linux, 60GB for NTFS/Windows.

So I want to put a distro of Linux that works well on laptops -- specifically, I don't want to spend 3 weeks and jump through 100 hoops to get things such as Pentium M/Centrino power throttling to work, adjustments for monitor backlight brightness, etc. These types of things "just work" in Windows, and I want the same in Linux.

It's an IBM ThinkPad T40. 1.5GHz Pentium M, Radeon 7500 32MB, 1GB RAM, integrated Cisco 802.11b wireless (mini-PCI).

Ideas?

[Kuciwalker]

At first I thought MNG had resurrected his old thread

[Asher]

As a minor bonus, it would be nice to have it work with my USB bluetooth dongle (D-Link DBT-120) to interface with my iPaq and GPS receiver...but I can understand if that's not possible.

[Asher]

bump?

[aneeshm]

Uhh . . . . . why excatly do you want to install Linux on your laptop ?

[Skanky Burns]

He's doing an IT degree. You can join the dots.

[laurentius]

There are several projects people have completed, perhaps so of them will work for you to. All of them require considerable amount of tweaking of course.

http://bellet.info/laptop/t40.html

http://thunk.org/tytso/linux/t40.html

http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/walter/geek/linux-t40.html

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~amurphy/linux/IBM-T40.html

heres a listing of projects

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ibm.html

[aneeshm]

If you want to go for a readymade distro , try Debian ( or a derivative ) . It may be the best for hardware support .

[Asher]

Originally posted by aneeshm
Uhh . . . . . why excatly do you want to install Linux on your laptop ?

It's either Linux or Solaris.

If I install a *nix on the laptop I can use the wireless network at school and not need to use the god-awful Solaris workstations or Linux PCs in the lab.

[Asher]

Originally posted by aneeshm
If you want to go for a readymade distro , try Debian ( or a derivative ) . It may be the best for hardware support .

I started downloading both Debian and Gentoo last night anyway, and I was amazed at the bloat of Debian...2 DVDs (~9GB?).

[Harovan]

Why you would download a full Debian distribution with all its huge software packages is beyond me. Just download what you need to get the system running (there should be such an option like a minimal system) and install the rest over the internet.

[Atahualpa]

Lots of people recommend ubuntu

Why don't you go with one of the BSDs?

[Asher]

I am morally opposed to not having the full OS on CD or DVD. It helps prevent some needless complications.

When I last tried Linux on my T40 1.5 years ago, the internet wouldn't even work (Cisco wireless drivers sucked).

[Harovan]

The full OS != The full OS + all ported software packages.

[aneeshm]

It's not bloat if you don't install it . It seems you're downloding most of the repository , aren't you ( full set of some thirteen or so CDs ) ?

And may I suggest *BSD if you want just a functional *nix ? AFAIK , you prefer the BSD environment and license to an equivalent GNU/Liux one .