Disclaimer:

The author disclaims all warranties with regard to this document, including all implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a certain purpose; in no event shall the author be liable for any special, indirect or consequential damages or any damages whatsoever resulting from loss of use, data or profits, whether in an action of contract, negligence or other tortious action, arising out of or in connection with the use of this document.

Introduction:

I did not try a lot of different distributions, because the first i installed worked fine. This was SuSE7.1 Professional-Edition. The reason why i bought this notebook was that the notebook had very good hardware inside, and this for a very attractive price. At the moment i bought the notebook i wasn´t really sure if would get running linux on it, but i read that the SiS chipset should be supported by linux and so i decided to try it. After 2weeks i think i can say that it was a good decicion to by this one, and the only thing which is not working under linux at the moment is the integrated modem, ithink iwill have to a pcmcia card for this.
Another very helpful page for you could be the page of Fabio Tosques (Page no longer on the web).

Specifications:

what i bought was a Gericom Webboy in april 2001 (for 2999,- DM MediaMarkt)
with following sepecifications:

Prozessor and Corelogic:
Processor: 850Mhz PIII
Corelogic: SiS-Chipset with integrated video, audio, network and modem Controller
Bus Architecture: 66Mhz frontside-bus (100Mhz ready)

Harddisk:
I got 12GB in one big partition, with Windows Millenium preinstalled.

CD/DVD-ROM:
cdromspeed: 24x
dvdromspeed: not speceficed

LCD Display Panel:
13,3-inch XGA active-matrix TFT display supported resolution 1024x768 with up to 16M colors Graphics

Graphic Controller:
SiS 630 with integrated AGP Bus 2D/3D graphics accelerator Graphics Ability: UltraAGP architecture graphics capability (similar to 4x AGP) Dual Display: Simutaneous LCD/External Monitor Supported etc.

Audio Chipset:
SiS 630 with integrated audio controller Sound Capability: 64-Voice Polyphony Wavetable Synthesizer; DirectSound 3D accelerator for IID, IAD and Doppler effects. Full duplex, independent sample rate converter. SoundBlaster PRO/16 compliant. AC'97 V2.1 interface supported. etc.

Modem Chipset:
SiS 630 with Modem Controller integrated Transmission Speed: V.90 / K56flex for download data speed up to 56000 bps; V.34, V.17, V.29 transmission protocol

LAN Network Adapter:
SiS 630 with integrated PCI Fast Ethernet funktion for 10Base-T and 100Base-TX network standards PnP Funktion: M$ Win 9x Plug'n'Pray compatible etc.

PC Card PCMCIA Controller:
O2Micro OZ 6812/ 6912 controller with Zoomed Video Capability Features: Single slot for TYPE II/III PC Cards with Card Bus 1.0 interface, etc.

Getting started:
The installation of SuSE-Linux is quite simple. It can also repartition your harddisk without loosing your data.

x-server:
How to get the x-server running: The easiest way for you to get your x-server running on a 1024x768 Mode with 16Bit color depth is following:
Install SuSE7.1 on your machine with yast2. If yast2 ask you for installing the x-server choose NO xserver. Just copy this XF86Config to /etc on your machine. Now you have to edit your /etc/lilo.conf change the vga=normal Parameter to vga=791.
> lilo
This will make your machine switching to a 16Bit mode on boot time. And change login configuration to graphical login in yast or in /etc/inittab if aou want to start withit.
You have to install another package with yast. xfbdev from the serie xsrvnow. you should be able to run sax for configuring your x-server:
> sax -s fbdev
If you want, you can test your configuration with:
> startx -- -bpp 16
Reboot your system! Now you should have a graphical login-panel and you can login to your machine.
If not: Try this:
> XF86_FBDev -bpp 16
> ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_FBDev /var/X11R6/bin/X
If everything works how expecting, go to /etc/rc.config.d/apmd.rc.config/apm and set APMD_LEAVE_X_BEFORE_SUSPEND="yes" .

Network:
getting the networkcard running in quite simple. Just load the drivers for your networkcard:
> modprobe sis900
and now enter your personal settings
> ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.99 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
and if you net a gateway, type:
> route add -net default gateway 192.168.0.1

Modem:
on my laptop the modem is not running, i think the problem is that it is a winmodem, so think iwill have to by a external one, but if anybody manage this problem, please let me know. There is one page about winmodems under linux, you can have a look at it if you want, and if you have a lot of spare time.
http://www.idir.net/~gromitkc/winmodem.html

10.07.01: here some news about the modem (thanks a lot to Andreas Gabriel from Marburg, who sent me this Information)
The Company Smartlink http://www.smlink.com has developed a driver for this modem. You can only download it here: ftp://ftp.smlink.com/public/new. This package is only testes with Kernel 2.4.4 (slmdm-2.03-01_linux_2.4.4.src.rpm); so you will have to recompile a Kernel, but then it should work fine.
Try installing them with foolowing command:
rpm --rebuild slmdm-2.03-01_linux_2.4.4.src.rpm
(note: I have not tested it on my Laptop yet, but i will let you now, jerome)

Sound:
The sound should work without problems, if you configure it with yast2.

So, have a lot of fun ...............................