[Tyler5690]

I've been looking for a speedy OS to use on my laptop for email and internet surfing. After reading multiple forums and comparison sites, I've shortened the list to Gentoo, FreeBSD. Any thoughts on which one, personal reccomendations, words of warning?

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A lot depends on your hardware. I'm not familiar with Gentoo other than it seems to require a good bit of configuration from what I've read but it is very stable. I've never had any success getting a BSD based system up and running stable, but haven't tried in awhile.

I have used SimplyMepis for over a year and a half and like it a lot. I have lately set up a laptop and an older desktop with PCLinuxOS .93a "big daddy" . Very impressive distro. you might look at the "Mini Me" version.

[silverbeard]

A lot depends on your hardware. I'm not familiar with Gentoo other than it seems to require a good bit of configuration from what I've read but it is very stable. I've never had any success getting a BSD based system up and running stable, but haven't tried in awhile.

I have used SimplyMepis for over a year and a half and like it a lot. I have lately set up a laptop and an older desktop with PCLinuxOS .93a "big daddy" . Very impressive distro. you might look at the "Mini Me" version.

[SuperSam]

Gentoo, you have to entirely customise and modify the Kernal purely for that laptop, this the fastest and strongest of them all, but requires a lot of time - but is well worth it.

[warriorscot]

Ive not tried Gentoo mainly because a friend warned me off he says it takes too long to configure and its not any better than any other distro. Im find of ubuntu its got the biggest userbase and there are tonnes of guides and help documents as well as large and easy to access repositories. Ive found it the easiest to use of any ive tried, although fedora looks nice but havent had much of a chance to use it.