looking for a good linux distro for a dell inspiron 1525

[lethargic]

My girlfriend got herself a Dell Inspiron 1525 a couple of months ago and she's recently gotten tired of fucking around with the Windows Vista OS that it came packaged with. She wants me to just reformat the whole thing to linux, but I'm kind of stuck on what distro to use.

She's sort of new to the whole linux thing and, while she is a bit of computer geek, I wanted to get her an OS that's easy to use. Something that just works, no fuss no muss.

She mostly uses her laptop for internet, chatting, movies, occasionally games, and a bit of graphic design.

I was thinking of going with Ubuntu Hardy Heron as I've been using it for quite some time now on my Dell Inspiron 4150 and I've had very few problems with it. I think the only real problem I've had is that Ubuntu doesn't entirely support my graphics card so a lot of the visual effects aren't available. A minor problem because it works just fine without all that fancy stuff. I kinda plan to mess around with other linux distros on my own laptop eventually (Fedora maybe), but Ubuntu makes me happy for now.

I decided to ask around here before I actually reformat her laptop. Are there any other good linux distros that anybody here would recommend?

Edit: System specs -

Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo T7250
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Graphics Card: Intel GMA X3100
Storage Capacity: 120 GB

http://www.artistx.org/site2/software/ <-- looks apealing, but i've never used it; DistroWatch.com should be able to provide you with all the information you need for deciding a distrobution

[ataraxia]

I'm guessing you'll find Fedora > Ubuntu in all probability.
I'm tentatively recommending Fedora.
If you hadn't included the "just works", I'd have said Slackware, so if you're feeling ballsy, I still say Slackware.

EDIT: one more thing. You can repartition and try out various distros before deciding on one if you so choose. Click on "Start", then right-click on "My Computer" and click "Manage". There should be two little partitions and one big one, click on the big one and click Shrink, and shrink it by at least 30 gigabytes. Then you can install whatever distro you're considering into those thirty gigabytes before deleting everything (to see if you like it).

[lethargic]

Meh. I saw that Ubuntu came out with a new version just last month so I updated my laptop and made hers into a dual-boot system. She's completely happy with it.

The only problem I seem to be having is that Windows games run through wine make the system reboot without warning. The main problem I seem to be having is Guild Wars. The Wine App DB says that the game runs perfectly in Wine on an Ubuntu system. I checked around on different forums and there seems to be compatibility issues between Wine, Compiz, and the Intel GMA X3100 graphics cards. A lot of threads in the Ubuntu forums suggested disabling desktop effects as they tend to screw with 3d games, but meh, still get the same thing.

So dunno. As I said, she's completely happy with it. She doesn't game very often lately so I don't think she's worried about it, but this one problem is going to keep fecking annoying me.

[coroner]

Overheating can cause a machine to reboot.

Check /var/log/messages next time it happens, it might give you a clue as to why it is rebooting.