You get access to six of the eight SPEs of the Cell under Linux. One core is disabled for a better yield, and one is reserved for the hypervisor. Just the RSX is locked out.

My upgrade was fine, aside from the fact that the installer found that I'd killed PulseAudio with a lead pipe and stuffed it into the fridge with "chmod -x /usr/bin/pulseaudio; chattr +i /usr/bin/pulseaudio". It threw a fit about a couple broken packages as a result. PulseAudio screws up my audio horribly on both my work box (Optiplex 755) and my home box (custom AM3 system). Killing it deader than dead made sound work perfectly (and kept it from reviving on package upgrades).

Unfortunately, 9.10 is dependent on PulseAudio to the point that you can't adjust the volume in Gnome without it. I switched to KDE, and I was happy.

To be safe, I decided to do a new install on my netbook, as the upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04 resulted in a nasty gconf bug that took me a month to track down (leftover 8.10 gconf breaks 9.04). They did finally fix the annoying rt2860 WPA bug. It was a recurring issue on my Eee.

Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

The Slim simply does not support the OtherOS feature that the original model had. Sony didn't want to put in the resources to write a new hypervisor interface for it.

It's implied that it can be implemented later if demand warrants it.