I'm installing Linux on a laptop for a friend - P4 1.8, 256 MB DDR, Radeon 7500, it's really a pretty nice laptop.
Redhat hates it, it hates Redhat (countless bugs, sound-related, scanning-related, PPP related, etc. both in 9.0 and I even tried the latest Severn and I don't feel like squashing them). It did work just fine when I installed it on his desktop... but oh well.
Gentoo takes way too long (he needs it by the end of next week, max, and what with package downloads on dialup.. yeah right) and he's pretty much computer illiterate.
Mandrake just seems too Redhat-like for me, plus I'm getting unstability reports, but I'm willing to give it a try.
Debian... I'm also willing to try it... but I just have a bad taste in my mouth after the last time I tried it (though that was several years ago- I just hated having to wait for up to date versions to make it into stable, which I'm definitely going to be using on someone else's machine).
SuSE I'd rather not pay for, and neither would he.
Slackware looks like my best option right now... as I've got the Slackware LiveCD loaded on there right now, and it's really fast and really nice looking (it's actually faster than Redhat was running off the disk).
Any reason why I shouldn't use slackware or I should use one of the others I've listed (or ones I've forgotten to list?) Ease of use after installation, lack of show-stopping bugs (i.e. no workarounds just to get on the web to get mail- we had that with Redhat on the laptop), and fast setup are of main importance (oh yeah.. free as well).
Thanks!
Bob Raymond
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