Using an IDE connected CD/DVD drive and a SATA disk the install went quite ok using the Fedora FC4 pre-release.
I got Gigabit Ethernet card to (sort of) work using the driver one can download from the ASUS page. However, there is a big BUT. The driver is not entirely stable and every so often the card needs to be restarted (ifdown eth0 ; ifup eth0). Also the driver is using depreciated kernel functions that are not available in 2.6.11 and needs some additional patching before it compiles. Last but not least once the kernel patch has been generated a complete kernel rebuild is required.
So, this is not really working solution. The kernel seems to support the 8051 and 8052 card but not the 8053 card. Does anyone have a better experience?
As for the Wireless card... any help would be greatly appreciated.