I tried to test this laptop with Trisquel 5.5 live-cd (by using an external DVD drive) and my pendrive which also had 5.5 installed. Both times the machine booted up to the desktop but the screen was always plank no matter what I tried. Neither changing the screen brightness or connecting to an external display worked.

I am sure the system managed to boot to the desktop because I heard the log in sound. It seems that there are some incompatibilities with the video card. The live-cd booted succesfuly into the graphical menu and allowed me to select the language and keyboard layout but after that the screen stayed blank.

Due to the above, I'm reporting this laptop as garbage. New versions of Trisquel or other free distros might give different results. I don't know whether a free distro can be installed or not. I can't test it because the owner did not give me permission to try, obviously. I was also unable to get any info regarding the internal parts of this laptop.