As those who are familiar with me know, I enjoy buying some of the latest gear available, and seeing how it is handled by a variety of Linux distributions. Sometimes, though, it is possible to get a bit too far ahead of the general development/release cycle. The HP Pavillion dm1-1020ez that I purchased in January is a case in point.

To be honest, I bought it because I wanted to try out the SU2300 Dual Core Celeron processor. At the time I thought that I might run into problems with the GMA4500MHD graphic controller, but I didn't really think about some of the other pitfalls. Now I know better...

I was initially pleased to see that the CPU and graphic system were recognized and properly supported by all of the Linux distributions that I typically use. They all saw two CPUs, speed stepping worked, the standard Intel graphic driver worked, and it got the screen resolution right (1366x768). Good stuff.

But the pleasant surprise didn't last long.