The best would be to run lspci on the machine as others suggested. You can paste the lspci -n output here and get the availability of drivers for linux. http://kmuto.jp/debian/hcl/
There is also lists of hardware/laptops known to be working on Gentoo. N series is not listed on Gentoo wiki but perhaps you can find it on other distros' wiki or at least find laptops with common hardware. http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Index:Laptops -- Fatih
