Linux on my laptop

Using Linux on the Desktop since 1999, I was quite excited about my first Linux laptop I bought last week. I have always been reluctant to deal with the different problems that normally arise when you replace a Windows system tuned by the manufacturer for the device through a Linux distribution of your choice. So buying a HP 635, with Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop ready to be installed, I thought being save of such problems. Effectively, once finished the installation, all system cyomponents worked as expected including wlan.
My satisfaction about what seems to me being a remarkable technical progress of Linux on laptops, and about the availability of devices sold with Linux instead of Windows, nevertheless got tainted by the very unclear terms under which this device is sold by HP. I have no problem with SLED being a commercial distribution, but neither on the distributor's website, nor in the documents accompanying the machine, I found any indication of what services I got entitled to by bying the product. Neither was there any manual or physical installation medium included. Registering the product at Novell's support center, you get confronted with a field for a licence key, which is not provided with the product either. Although you can leave the field blank, I found it nonetheless confusing. Only some googling revealed the information, that support and updates  would be provided for 90 days, and extension to this duration provided as HP Care packages. While this all makes sense to me for a system sold to enterprises, I imagine selling it to private users curious about Linux, but not proficient with it, and not familiar with the distinction between free software and free beer, must lead to confusion and frustration.

Finally I decided to replace SLED with Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise) which started the second part of the adventure. The wlan was no longer actionable through the wlan key (f12). "rfkill list" revealed that the "phy0" device stayed "hard blocked". For those reading this while confronted with the same issue: The solution that finally worked after some hours of mounting frustration consisted in booting the device from a 11.04 live CD, which allows to unblock phy0. After rebooting back into 12.04, wlan works flawlessly!