Best Unix for a shitty laptop

Not that bad in terms of specs - but most distros (FreeBSD, ReactOS, Gentoo) don't agree with my hardware.
What a Unix OS that's small enough to learn about operating systems while still being likely to work with my shitty laptop?

>>2
Debian works alright, but I'd prefer a distro that's as minimal as possible. I'm only using this to learn - I don't care much about application support.