Remarkably, the Flybook works exceptionally well with Linux. I am a Linux beginner, but have tried to get a Sony Picturebook (C1MGP) working with Linux before and it was a nightmare of proprietary devices and hardware issues. The Flybook is very well designed and modular, and the chosen components are mostly supported, in a stable fashion, by Linux. I am now using the Flybook daily as my corporate laptop, solely with Linux. I am now only rebooting into Windows to try to get more hardware info on the touchscreen and Flybook function-key driver.

The remaining issues for completeness are:

a) Touchscreen
This is covered above in section 18. The core hardware is a PenMount panel (as you'd expect, being manufactured by Dialogue), however there appears to be a proprietary, or non-obvious, interface between the PCI bus and the PenMount panel. If this interface can be exposed in Linux as a standard /dev/tty serial port, then the PenMount panel will work perfectly in X, since serial and USB PenMount panels are already supported in X. If, as I suspect, the interface is more like an i8042 keyboard/mouse port, then perhaps a custom kernel driver can be developed fairly easily from existing code. However, if the PenMount panel is exposed to Linux as an i8042 AUX mouse port, then it'll probably work with X perfectly, but I am not sure how to go about calibration of the panel. If the panel is badly calibrated, then it is pretty much useless.

b) Flybook Custom Controller
Thankfully, this isn't needed to operate the laptop effectively. This appears to be a small device that hooks into the Function-key functionality (e.g. pressing Fn+F9 turns on the power to the GPRS phone). Windows uses this to run certain programs when the devices are turned on (e.g. turning on the GPRS phone activates the Mobile PhoneTools application). There are also function-key presses to change screen brightness, hibernate the system, change speaker volume, and turn on backlighting for the mouse buttons.
Luckily, the function-key presses still work in Linux without a driver for this device: the backlight, screen brightness, Wifi, GPRS and Bluetooth functions appear to be BIOS-driven. However a simple driver for the Flybook controller would be useful for the following reasons:

• Hibernation control as per the keyboard icons: I am currently using ACPI button/lid events to hibernate the laptop, but for completeness the Fn+F3/F4 keypresses should also be supported
• Volume control. Much quicker on the move than fiddling with the trackpoint to move a small bar widget on the desktop
• Software control of net devices. System scripts could be modified to turn power on to the GPRS modem / Wifi if the respective interfaces are activated

The custom controller has a specific driver download available on the Dialogue website for Windows XP. The driver is very small in size, so hopefully not very complicated! I'll add more here as I get info about the device.