[citation][nom]alphaalphaalpha[/nom]All of the distros that you listed are based of of each other (except Debian, of which all of the others in your list are based partially or wholly on), so if one of them had a problem, well, it's not really surprising that the others had a problem. Try using Linux distros that aren't built on Debian. My laptop has no problem with any distro that I've tried (which is quite a lot), but it doesn't have Optimus to deal with.Try Xpud, Tinycore, Slackware, or a few others and see if you get different results.[/citation]
Oh yeah, more usual Linux fanboy crap - "try another distro". If that doesn't work, you're doing it wrong, blah blah blah. Your Slackware is downright repulsive for a Windows user, not everyone likes derping around with a terminal and building a system from scratch. Debian, Ubuntu and Mint are by far the most sane Linux distros at the moment and going further is just a waste of time. There's nothing that Slackware (or other stuff you named, haven't even heard) can do that Ubuntu can't. There's little to zero advantage to an "OS optimized for your hardware", today's hardware is powerful enough to make the difference negligible. I don't care if your Slackware boots a bit faster, Ubuntu GUI is pretty (was pretty, at least, before Unity appeared) and everything is included.
No, Debian is the standard and Ubuntu is its harbinger. Everything else can do a barrel roll, nobody will miss it.