Mandrake Linux.
the buck stops here,
I have been using linux from around 1999, and have tried Redhat, Fedora, Mandrake, Debian, Ubuntu, and am now on gentoo and plan to stay there. But the most newbie friendly and at the same time powerful distro i have encountered is Mandrake. If you want CDs contact the linux-bangalore group on yahoo. Many of the members will be willing to sell you the CDs for the cost of blank CD. you can get the same from GTCDROm for 300rs or so. If you really want to help madrake get the Boxed set(3000rs or so) or buy a copy and purchase mandrake club membership or make a donation
As for your laptop hardware support, if it works with Fedora, it will work with madrake. I do not like fedora because it breaks a lot of things and tries to dumb down things too much. With madrake you have good gui, but if you want to get to basics it offers you that freedom too.
another distro which i have heard of a lot but used only little is ubuntu. Newbies swear by it. though i am not too sure about how good it is compared to mandrake, but compared to Fedora it plain rocks. Ubuntu advantage is that the help forums and community forums are much more widespread. Infact many linux-banaglore group members would be happy to meet you at a coffee shop and install it on your laptop.
If you do IRC chat, do drop in #linux-india channel on irc.freenode.net and chat up with the people |