• 850 mHz mobile Pentium III processor with SpeedStep
• 512 MB RAM (upgraded from the 128 MB the machine shipped with)
• 18.6 gigabyte hard drive (advertised,  of course,  as "20GB" with the disclaimer that "GB=1 billion bytes"; a gigabyte is really the cube of 1,024 or 1,073,748,124 bytes.  Where's the Federal Trade Commission when you need them?)
• S3 Savage IX with MV video card; 8 MB memory, driving a 15" 1024x768 TFT screen
• Integrated Accton EN2242 Series MiniPCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
• Integrated ESS ES56CVM-PI Data Fax Voice Modem
• Integrated ESS Allegro PCI Audio (WDM) card
• Combo DVD/CD-RW drive
• 2 USB ports, infrared port, parallel, serial, and VGA ports, PS/2 and video out jacks
• Windows ME preinstalled

The Linux distribution I originally installed was Red Hat 7.2, downloaded from their FTP site and burned to CDs.  I used FIPS and WinME's fdisk to free 6 gigabytes of hard drive space and chose the laptop install option.  It appeared that everything but the infrared port and modem was detected and properly configured-which, in the case of the modem, isn't surprising since it's software-based (read "a Winmodem").  There are various drivers floating around the Internet that are said to work with ESS PCI modems, but I haven't had any success with any of them.   One big problem is that all the drivers I've seen are in binary form, and thus will only work-if they work-with just one distribution or kernel version.  I've come to the conclusion that anyone who really needs to use this machine with a modem in Linux would be better advised to obtain a true hardware-based modem, which Linux supports natively, and use that rather than hassle with trying to get the internal one working.  I used a PC Card modem I bought for my previous laptop without a problem.  However, if you want to play around with the internal modem anyway, a search through the mailing list archives at  www.linmodems.org  will provide links to the drivers and documentation.

Later I upgraded the Linux installation to  Red Hat 8.0.  It didn't help with the modem any, but I was able to confirm that the built-in Ethernet adapter works.  However, the network configuration tool still didn't like my wireless PC Card  (a D-Link DWL-650, which is supposed to be Linux compatible).

Some other things that would have been nice to get working are the infrared port (which probably just requires the editing of a few configuration files here and there), power management (APM enables the machine to turn itself off at shutdown, but not to suspend or hibernate), and the four "one-touch" buttons above the keyboard that in Windows can be set up to start programs such as the Web browser, e-mail client, or online help when pressed (they're apparently invisible to Linux).  I have heard that there are drivers which can operate the one-touch buttons on some Omnibook computers which are similar in design to this machine.  A Google search should turn up links to information about them.  
 
 

Linux, of course, is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.  All other copyrights, trademarks, and other intellectual property not my own mentioned here are the property of their respective owners.