There are the easy ones already provided that go along with being a human being people like being around like hygiene. Most of the rest is completely relative to your employers environment. Behavior that will make you popular with you co-workers where I work would get you fired in a corporate environment and vice a versa. I think what you really want is a good resource for behaviors that will lead to success in your career. You should pick up a copy of Apprenticeship Patterns by Dave Hoover and Adewale Oshineye. It has also been made available online as creative commons through O'reily's site.

I would second Ubuntu. Haven't tried a netbook install. But I know I've run regular Ubuntu on some machines that were pretty sparse on resources and it performed like a champ. Also it is a super user friendly install (I would suggest being hardwired to the internet while installing).

Agreed. First of all in almost all situations it is extremely ill advised and/or illegal to give a negative reference. Secondly EEPROMS is correct. Ninety Nine percent of the time all you'll need to do to squash that kind of behavior is to get a lawyer to send a letter. Find an attorney that is a friend of the family and most of the time they'll knock out something like this as a favor for relatively cheap or free.