I was very impressed with how easily I installed Ubuntu Desktop AMD64 version 12.10 on the $500 HP laptop we've been talking about. I used another Ubuntu box to download an ISO and make a bootable USB. Then I booted the HP laptop with the USB stick and installed Ubuntu, killing Windows 7 (it was a refurb, so Win 7 instead of Win 8). It found the wireless networks and used it to bring in updates. It was super smooth -- never a problem. Ubuntu has come a long way. One annoyance: Hibernate is disabled by default. I used this page to get it fixed... http://nikunjlahoti.com/2012/10/31/enable-hibernation-on-ubuntu-12-10/ ...and that worked fine. I don't know if there will be problems with any other parts. Mike