Faced with failure from Ubuntu Lucid UNR 10.04 on my Gateway LT3201u "netbook" (11.something" 720p LED LCD makes it more of a subnotebook) I decided to try Lubuntu, a faster, more lightweight and energy saving variant of Ubuntu using LXDE, the Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. So far it has been an unqualified success; the ati video driver worked correctly and I have so-far-stable 720p, OpenGL-accelerated graphics. Compiz seems a little slower than on Karmic, but I haven't exactly done any benchmarking.
Interestingly, Chromium seems to have grown up into a totally usable browser while I wasn't looking. It's the only one included in this distribution, and I decided to give it a go rather than installing Firefox and all that it depends upon.
Ugh, I just scrolled, and got video corruption. Heh heh.