The age of the laptop in question, the hardware specs you have, and the distribution of linux you choose to install make a huge difference here.

I can only give you some helpful links to let you go and discover more based on the two factors above. good luck .

These are two laptop( notebook) specific sites that might help:
http://www.linux-drivers.org/ and specifically http://www.linux-drivers.org/notebooks.html

http://www.tuxmobil.org/pcmcia_linux.html - deals with pcmcia cards specifically.
although tbh if the laptop didn't come with cd-rom as standard it might be a little too old a machine for a beginner at Linux to tackle (you might get old kit incompatibility issues).

Which ever distribution you use (Ubuntu, debian, Susue etc) make sure it's one with an established development community and plenty of documentation.

good luck !