Despite the fact that I use Gentoo GNU/Linux operating system for my desktop PC, my laptop doesn’t would like to burn someday. I have been searching a really easy GNU/Linux distribution for my laptop, and really trying out the current state of the GNU/Linux desktop for normal users. I was just looking for a distribution that detected all my laptop hardware automatically and let me connect to my WPA secured wireless connection. I just wanted everything working without the need of running any command or reading any wiki or forum (just what a normal user would do).
I gave my first try to Kubuntu. For my surprising, from graphical configuring tools, it only lets you add WEP protected wireless connections, what is not enough, I think.
OpenSuSE had merits. I really liked the way the installation was handled (really nice work SuSE team). I found a bit descentralized the way repositories are handled. Let me explain: you have to read a wiki where repositories depends on the OpenSuSE version you have right now (for example 10.2), and then add them. They added a really nice new kde menu. It handled properly my WPA wireless connection.
So I wanted to give a try PC Linux OS. I have to admit I’m impressed. This was like a dream. It has a really nice appearance (very redmond-like, but is nice for me) at a first look, and the installation can be handled by a kid. Is very intuitive and does exactly what you should expect it to do. It comes by default with KDE, so more points to it. It has a very easy control-center like for managing configurations and so on (YaST like tool). It seems it has all KDE splitted, what is pretty nice for installing only what you want. Anyway, I’m missing Kile. It seems it is not on the “official” repositories.
So as I said before… despite the fact I use Gentoo on my desktop PC (pretty stable, but I could die by heart-attack if someday my computer breaks): too much work and time on it (mostly when installing first time). So for laptops it seems there are many distributions that do really well.
I like to experiment with this kind of things, so if you want to suggest me your chosen distribution just tell me, and I can give it a try 🙂