I am going to wipe the HDD and have the laptop run Linux Mint. I am currently downloading the ISO to LinuxMint 17.1 with the Cinnamon desktop environment.
if i were you i wouldn't do that, i would keep win7 and install along side the linux distro, i think you are better off with Ubuntu 14.04 then Mint, if it's because you don't like Unity! i would install the Gnome flashback desktop,or gnome3 or XFCE4,
the way i have installed Win and Linux in my computer is this way,
i install Win first than i install Linux,in the terminal, sudo apt-get update-grube, and when you boot it goes to a screen that gives you the choice of booting Linux or Win, if you do not choose it will boot strait to Linux.And about Web Browser do install Google Chrome
Lol at the three above.. Anyways, it you wanted original Linux Slackware is there... Otherwise I see no point in trying to find another distro that'll run the same..
For one thing, the ubuntu desktop comes with X and GNOME installed. I believe when you install slackware you just get a terminal. Slackware's package handling is via tar balls, whereas ubuntu uses debs via the Synaptic Package Manager. Ubuntu will resolve dependencies for you, whereas slackware will not, so you are required to deal with the dependency resolution yourself (there may be a piece of software to add dependencies, but I don't know for definite, can someone confirm or deny this?)
Anyways, ubuntu is far more user friendly than pretty much ALL other linux distributions
