I've run Mandrake, Redhat and more recently Slack on my Dell Inspiron 8000.

The latest releases of Mandrake or Redhat should probably install and run fine with minimal to no tweaking. With Slackware you will always have to manually configure and set your system up.

As with any system, If your hardware is supported, then any linux distrobution would work - some just take a little more patience than others.

My opinion is that if you know your way around Linux and you know your laptop well go with Slackware, if not Mandrake or Redhat will be the better choice.


BTW, My Dell uses an internal CD-RW and modular DVD-ROM both manufactured by Sony.