) Earlier tonight I installed Ubuntu 7.10 on an old disk. After installing I got a message if I wanted to install the nVidia drivers. I did. After that, I downloaded and extracted SL.
I started SL and it worked!
I tried different Linuxes in the past, but I never could get SL to work. This time it was less then an hour, including installing Ubuntu!
The only thing I need to fix is sound. I can stream audio with Totem, and I get the startup music but I dont have sound in SL yet.
But that is a minor inconvenience compared to my last attempt on Debian, a year ago.
So for those willing to try: go ahead, it's a piece of cake now!