what is the best distro for HP laptop?

[bob295]

On December 14, 2012 11:21:07 AM you wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 9:58 AM, bob295 <icanprogram-sKcZck+fQKg at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > A colleague of mine has acquired a used HP laptop (HP Pavilion dv9000 AMD
> > Turion 64 x2 Mobile Tech TL-52 x2 1600 MHz).
> > 
> > Any suggestions on what Linux distro would be best for this machine?
> 
> If you were to ask 20 people "What the best flavour of ice cream?",
> you could get 20 legitimate, but different answers.
> 
> I run Debian on my laptop, which for some is arguably not the "best",
> but I have been running Debian on my desktop, so I am familiar with
> where things are, how things are organized etc.. So, is your colleague
> familiar with a major distribution currently? That is where I would
> start, any MAJOR Linux distribution should be okay on a laptop, and
> the ease of transition from desktop to laptop could well be worth any
> minor defects the disto. has in dealing with laptops. If there is a
> show stopper with the desktop distro., then I would be looking at
> distributions from the same conceptual family, so if they know Debian,
> I would look at say Ubuntu, or if they know Red Hat then a look at
> Fedora/CentOS would be worth while.
> 
> If they don't currently know a Linux distribution, then you are
> starting at square one, and a range of arguments can be made for
> different distributions. I would suggest your colleague stick with one
> of the major distributions (more likely to include support / updates
> for oddball laptop hardware), but comments on my part beyond that are
> likely to trigger an unwanted flame war...
> 
> 
> Colin McGregor
> 
> > Thanks in advance for your help.
> > 
> > bob
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Thanks for all the responses so far.    I guess my question was not so much 
about merits of any given distro,  but rather which distro would stand the 
best chance of installing and discovering/enabling all the hardware on the HP 
laptop with the minimum of fuss.

I seem to recall that HP products had a reputation for being less than Linux 
friendly,  although my experience with them is now quite dated.

bob

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