Installing a Linux distribution to a SDHC card?

I just got done installing Windows on my Aspire One with an 8GB solid-state drive. That took a long time, counting the time to install all the updates to get everything working. I would like to install a Linux distribution on it, so I can dual-boot Linux and Windows, but I don't want to have to reinstall Windows. I have a couple of questions.

The solid-state drive is dog-slow. I read somewhere that the reason the Aspire One has two SD slots is that one of them is a SDHC-only slot "to easily expand the 8GB SSD for extra space." (According to a review I read somwhere) Anyway, would it be possible to buy a really-fast SDHC card, put an OS on it, and boot from the SDHC card?

Is there a Linux distribution that can be installed on the Aspire One and have most features (especially the wireless capability) run "out of the box" without a lot of extra hacking? I'm not counting Linpus. I gave Linpus a try when I got my Aspire One, but I didn't like how it was geared to the lowest-common denominator. I tried Ubuntu, but I could not get the wifi to work no matter what I tried, and I followed a "howto" very carefully. I would like to install a relatively "mainstream" distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) and have it work without a lot of extra work.

 

Good question. I have the hard drive model with xp. I'm curious to know it it would be possible to use the sdhc slot to dual boot linux.

 

AFAIK there is no Boot from SD option in Bios. In that case installing Linux distro on SD will be pointless...