So far this laptop is surprisingly fast in Slackware Linux 12.2

Installation: went easy enough. This laptop at first was flaky with the DVD install media that works good on my other laptop. However, once I got running on Linux and burned the DVD on this laptop, it worked fine in the future (since I played with Slackware, Slamd64, and Mandriva).

I booted Slackware uneventfully on the Generic-SMP kernel (using an initrd which I configured before rebooting but after installation). Works great! Even with X.org not configured (i.e. default VESA) Xfce and KDE run great! After configuration, it runs even faster.

Slackware Linux puts almost no load on this laptop during use. It's the perfect distribution for those who value perfection, elegance, simplicity, and efficiency.

Don't bother trying to use Intel frame buffer driver. First, I couldn't get mine to work in simple 800x600 (vga=788) even with the kernel properly configured. Second, switching to/from virtual terminals without frame buffer (ctrl+alt+F5 | ctrl+alt+F7) in X gave me no problems as with other intel display chipsets in the past (such as the 855GM). I use Slackware so I really don't mind not having startup frame buffer. Once you get X configured, you can have Slackware boot to init level 4 (graphical), so this becomes a moot point.

Intel's sound worked great with ALSA (provided you add your users to the audio group).

After updating the kernel, my Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 works great with Skype.

I put the laptop into ondemand and the processors never seem to climb above 1GHz unless I'm actually doing something substantial. The fans regulate themselves automatically, so there's no need for configuration.

X.org seems to find the maximum resolution and use that. My experience with Xfce was fantastic. I never had any lags. Very lean, trim system.

I tested the card reader with a 4GB Sony Memory Stick Pro Duo and it worked great. Read performance was twice that of the optical drive.

Burning CD-RWs, DVD-RWs, and DL DVD's worked just fine. No problems.

Suspend to RAM and to disk work very good so far. My favorite by far is suspend to RAM. I could do this over and over and never seem to have any problems with any devices.

Display switching does not work. This is an onboard Intel chipset, so if you want to run a projector or second monitor, plug it in before starting up the machine. I did not yet try to force dual head display in Slackware, but I've never been on any distribution with any Intel onboard graphics that could control both monitors independently. Oh well. You get what you pay for: the Intel chipset was meant to save power and be economical and efficient, not have thousands of features.

I have not tried the ExpressCard or Firewire features yet.

I got the keyboard shortcuts to work using xmodmap after finding their keys using xev. Using Xfce's keyboard shortcuts configuration, I added commands for all of these, to include a nifty use of kdesu to put the machine in suspend. It all works great!

I'm very happy with this laptop. My main website for this laptop is found here.