I have a Gateway Laptop with 1GB of RAM and an Intel Pentium Dual Core. I currently do not have an operating system installed on it. I want to put linux on it. What distro would be the best? I would like to be able to play DVD Videos on it and run apps such as OpenOffice.org. I have already tried: Fedora 10, OpenSuse 11, and Ubuntu. I was not able to play DVDs on any of those.

"I was not able to play DVDs on any of those" One of the nice things about Linux is that almost all distros have access to a repository where programs can be found & installed. If the distro you're using is unable to play DVD's "out of the box", all you have to do is choose a player from the list & install it. Try Linux Mint...it's based on Ubuntu, but it's better :-) http://linuxmint.com/

Download VLC video lan client to use with DVD's. Many of the major distros do not include various codecs and other non-free or non-open sourced code. There are distros that do offer all that already installed. You have tried some of the best so far. Might as well try OpenSolaris too. Each have different ways to use and install apps. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10