[loudmax]

Your experience running Linux on a laptop is highly dependent on how well it supports the hardware that happens to be in your device. If you're able to research the driver support ahead of time, you may find that Linux runs flawlessly on the laptop you bought. If you install Linux on a random laptop, then getting wifi, audio, etc working can be hit or miss, depending on the drivers.

As far as installing apps, I guess it depends on what you're trying to install. In my experience installing apps is easier on Linux than on any proprietary OS, so long as you're installing open source applications and working within the package manager and keeping your system up to date. If you want to run proprietary software on your open source OS, then yeah it's more difficult since Linux distributions aren't really designed for it.

[cr0sh]

> Your experience running Linux on a laptop is highly dependent on how well it supports the hardware that happens to be in your device.

My second mainline Linux install was a copy of RedHat on a laptop.

Mind you, this was RedHat 5.1 on an old 486 laptop with 8 meg of RAM, PCMCIA, etc. Sometime in 1995 or 96, I forget.

Several re-compiles later, I had that entire system working - all drivers for all the hardware, including the built-in modem (plus sound and PCMCIA ethernet).

I got lucky there.

[anongraddebt]

This.

I had an Asus laptop that would only pickup wifi if I hibernated it first. I have a Dell touchscreen model that took a full day to get the touchpad to work at all as Ubuntu kept defaulting to the screen. Too afraid to do a fresh install of the current (or any other) distro because I can't remember how I fixed the touchpad issue.