So I got a new Lenovo G50. I found all the required drivers in kernel itself. Seems to be quite Linux friendly so far (not installed desktop yet).
There's one problem though. The kernel module ideapad-laptop which apparently recognizes the hotkey stuff, backlight and some other things doesn't let me use wireless. rfkill shows it's hard blocked. Is there any way to change this? Some Google results tell me that this is related to the WiFi toggle via windows. The machine never contained windows ( I bought it with freedos). I'm not comfortable with opening it to remove CMOS battery as suggested by yet another Google search result.