Okay I'm making this entry with my Dell Vostro 1500 laptop, which I have had for a few months now. I ordered it with Windows XP to avoid all the grief associated with the blight known as Vista (or Fistula, in some quarters).
However, now I am trying something new. I have a new command available, and when I run it, I get this:
Linux hecate 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
I have crossed over into the light, by way of Ubuntu 7.10. I am amazed at how much of the Dell hardware worked right away, with no further effort from me - the video is great, the touchpad works as it should, sound worked after a little research and tweaking. I just downloaded Skype and it works very well, including video, which is astonishing.
The movie player worked on a DVD I threw in the drive, but it wasn't a late issue commercial movie so I'm not sure if it can handle movies yet. The wireless card is running and detected by the system but I haven't configured it for my router yet.
I accomplished all this the safe way: I replaced the original WXP drive with a new Seagate SATA 60GB drive so I can go back if I need to. Dell puts funny partitions on their drives and I didn't want to get tangled up in repartitioning right off the bat.
But I am getting all the Vostro hardware and features working, one by one. I'm not sure how long before I will need to put the old drive back in.