[LAU] Asus EEE 1000 as new softsynth?

I've purchased a new Asus EEE 1000 PC, and I love this thing. First off, almost everything on it just works with Linux, out of the box! I've never had a laptop on which everything actually worked properly. Audio, wireless, suspend-to-disk, even the webcam works with Debian EEE distro, out of the box! I was stunned. I've never experienced anything like this with linux. It's tiny, weighs almost nothing, has a usable keyboard, no moving parts (except the fan), runs a full linux distro, and sips battery power. I can stuff it into my backpack and I am in portable computing heaven. Because this thing is so many kinds of awesome, of course I want to run JACK on it and use it as my new softsynth for live performance purposes. I'm running Debian, using the 2.6.26 kernel (Lenny). I'm told that this kernel is completely unsuitable for Linux Audio work. However, I can't backtrack to older kernels because this one has all the hardware support I need. What kernel would you recommend for patching with Ingo goodness? This thing is a dual 686 Intel Atom at 1.2Ghz; with my good USB soundcard I'd expect to at least get a couple fluidsynth instances and LADSPA plugins going without incident. -ken