depends on what drivers you need. the kernel in suse 11.1 supports most of the w500 hardware out of the box.
http://www.linlap.com/wiki/Lenovo+Thinkpad+W500
has a good summary what generally works and what doesn't work under linux.
been running my w500 under suse 11.1 myself and the most important hardware is working.
definitely not working atm are
* switchable graphics (at least not hotswitching), but you might be able to setup a solution for switching in bios at boottime and system using right xconfig then. (but the proprietaryati driver is a bit problematic with this)
there is no problem to setup the computer for one of the 2 gfx cards tho.
* fingerprint reader (seems to be a newer model thats not supported yet by the current drivers)
* suspend/recovery wit ati catalyst driver, not sure if its working with intel gfx, or radeonhd driver only tested it myself with catalyst.
