debian-PPC powerbook laptop support.

[David Smoot]

What (if anything) do I give up by blowing out Mac OS X entirely and going to Debian-PPC on my powerbook?
Airport?
Sleep / power management?
Bluetooth?
External Monitor support?

I have a 1.67GHz powerbook 15" with 1 gig ram purchased in April of last year.  I had the unit set up as dual boot debian to help me in my quest to get more familiar with linux, debian, and open source in general.  But working for a living, I relied primarily on Mac OS X as my work environment, not because it was better but because I understood it and it  was already configured to just work without me messing with it.

Long story short, I had to send my laptop back for repairs under warranty.   In the mean time I was forced to use an X86 Debian desktop.  And I really liked it. 

As I expected they wiped out my laptop hard drive and sent it back as a blank OS X machine with none of my personal data.  Unfortunately my backup was hosed.  I have a second backup that is about 5 months old.

So I am at a decision point.  I've already lost about 5 months of data anyway.
I can forget linux on my laptop and just set up mac os X (most expedient but it does not get me any closer to my long term goal of becoming more linux fluent)
I can set my system back up as dual boot (most work but most flexible)
I can throw away OS X and go full linux.

If this were a desktop I would not hesitate to take the plunge.  But battery life / sleep / suspend and all those laptop issues matter to me.  What (if any) compromises would I be forced into if I go full Linux?

Anybody been down this path and care to share their wisdom?

Thanks in advance,

David