My new laptop is on order decided not to get another mac yet try another dell. Its coming with that thing called vista(what is it im an OS X user). I don't know wat linux distro to install on my new laptop im really stuck. On the clusters at work they use opensolaris in the lab next door debian and on the machine they supply redhat, so what to go? Will this laptop run OS X?
Thanks in Advance
D.

My suggestion would be openSUSE

Seconded. I read that it is really great for notebooks. Get the 32bit DVD and install either KDE 3.5 or Gnome (or both). KDE 4 is rubbish.

Yes.
Try this thread.
And this one.

I have heard some good things about OpenSUSE.

Debian all the way I think, with the install of OS X as well just for fun. But which desktop environment? Gnome looks impressive yet KDE has its advantages for the software developer.

Get the GNOME version of OpenSUSE 11. I'm a bigtime KDE guy, but Novell did a kickass job implementing GNOME. They completely integrated YaST2 into it to achieve a much better balance of control/friendliness than the standard upstream GNOME that most of the big distros use. It does an EXCELLENT job giving you the granularity of Linux on a GUI that is friendly for both new and power users.