I suppose I wrote the post in a confusing way that allowed it to be misinterpreted. The laptop has no difficulties running Windows and performs very well in every way. I have been running computers with Radeon Graphics cards for nearly 20 years and have never felt that they have “poor driver support and second rate hardware”. If they did I assume that this line of products would not have survived for as long as they have.
Many Radeon products do have Linux support, but no one that I am aware of has managed to get Linux builds fully functional on my newest laptop. At some point someone probably will. I would actually be happy to set up a fully functional Windows 7 build dual booting on it.
I misunderstood then.