Most any current distribution will work fine on this, even though the CPU is a bit pokey. Try Linux Mint (derived from Ubuntu, which is in turn derived from Debian). If you want a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) system, you can install either CentOS or Scientific Linux (SL), which are free clones of RHEL. I use RHEL 5.4 and 6.1 at work, SL 6.0 and 6.1 at home, and used to use CentOS 5.x, but switched to SL a bit over a year ago because CentOS was slow in adopting RHEL version 6, which has major improvements over 5.x in hardware support, and current software such as audio/video editing tools.
rubberman
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Be wary. VAIOS are a nightmare. Really nonstandard hardware, so probs won't get on well with Linux, especially if it's a recent model, Just upgrading windows on them is quite a pain.
jbennet
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The situation with nvidia is a lot better now. Ati is slightly more problematic but still easy enough.
Geting restricted drivers running under fedora etc...is still a bitch. Ubuntu is easy peaty.
jbennet
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