well the easy advice is to get a live cd such as kanotix or knoppix and let it run....
then read /var/log/dmesg or messages or syslog.....apart from reading the bootup message if you are quick enough, heh heh
generally speaking....bios is set to PnP to OFF
and your distro kernel should support acpi
however if you read this
http://computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/6592.html you may agree with me that this is one of the computers who thinks everyone are idiots so reserves some space on your harddrive for its own tools....if you run the F10 setup utility you cause it to overwrite your mbr and it was probably written with a MS bootloader, boo hoo.
if I am right....no need to fret...you install linux and wipe all that free space....you will know there is a sneaky hidden partition when you use the live cd and run qtparted in root mode