I have been reading through a number of threads on this topic, but I'm not sure they fit my circumstance. I have a Viliv S10. I love it except for Windows 7. Does any one have a suggestion for a linux distro that will still allow me effective handwriting recognition? This tablet has a keyboard, but the handwriting feature was a big factor in buying it. I have seen a lot about Android (and love it on my phone) but I'm not sure it provides all I need for this. If there was a distro I could run from a flash drive until I had evaluated it, that would be ideal.

You will have to try running it from a flash drive to see if the touch screen is supported. Then you have to see if you would even be able to use any of the writing software. I think every thing else ought to be OK.

Android x86 is the place maybe for that but there are plenty of other tablet and netbook distros.

So, are you using it for writing or general use?
Good flash drive distro's I like are Porteus (Slackware/Slax based)
http://porteus.org/

ArchBang, which I have on my old, old toshiba 7000CT lappy (266mhz, 160mb ram, pentiumII)
http://archbang.org/

and Jolicloud, a cloud based Ubuntu derivative
http://www.jolicloud.com/

If you wish to put all 3 or more on same flash drive ( 4GB+) I'll help you out, very easy

The Villiv S5 (which is similar to the S10 if the name is right) has an Android-x86 build target of its own. And even if it doesn't work, you can still install the generic build on it fairly easily (just download the ISO image and make a USB key with Unetbootin). The latest x86 build of Android is Froyo (Android 2.2). But be warned: Apparently, the Android Market (because it is the open source version) isn't on it, and apparently there's no way to use the Android Market Web client unless you have the Market app installed. However, thankfully (even though I did not test this) if you have an Android phone besides you can try moving the Market app to the phone's microSD card and use an SD card adapter to transfer the app to your Android-x86 tablet. However, there's no guarantee that this will work, because there might be architecture incompatibilities to deal with.

There are other android based markets. Handango.com for instance is a place that you can buy apps. I just bought a Tablet PC and want to go to linux because I hate the app based world. Maybe Honeycomb will be better. But yeah all the cool apps are on android market. So it complicates the matter.