I believe I have exactly this laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 running smoothly. Granted, I haven't checked every single piece of hardware for functionality but display, wireless, sound, USB and Bluetooth appear to work as expected.
A couple of useful tidbits I discovered while playing around over the past few days:
If you want Unity 3D desktop features to work properly, do not install the proprietary drivers for your graphics card. When I did this, Unity 3D stopped working and I could not identify a simple workaround. After deactivating the proprietary drivers, I went one step further and did a clean install of the open source Raedon drivers, following: How to install Radeon Open Source Driver? and Unity 3D works fine.
You'll probably notice that the fan runs at high speed at all times. I found several websites explaining how to use the "i8kutils" packages to manage fan speed, and the solution appears to work well. For example: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=842775 Load the module was required for the fan settings to take effect: sudo modprobe i8k
.
My configuration file (/etc/i8kmon.conf) looks like:
# Run as daemon, override with --daemon option
set config(daemon) 1
# Automatic fan control, override with --auto option
set config(auto) 1
# Status check timeout (seconds), override with --timeout option
set config(timeout) 2
# Report status on stdout, override with --verbose option
set config(verbose) 1
# Temperature thresholds: {fan_speeds low_ac high_ac low_batt high_batt}
set config(0) {{0 0} -1 55 -1 55}
set config(1) {{0 1} 50 60 55 65}
set config(2) {{1 1} 55 80 60 85}
set config(3) {{2 2} 70 128 75 128}
# end of file
I've been keeping an eye on the core temps to make sure that the fan settings are sane, and they appear to be. To this end:
sudo apt-get install lm-sensors
sudo sensors-detect
followed by installation of the Hardware Sensors Indicators,
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:alexmurray/indicator-sensors
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install indicator-sensors
For reference and comparison of hardware, here is the output from lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Ivy Bridge Graphics Controller (rev 09)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB xHCI Host Controller (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Panther Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev c4)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev c4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Panther Point LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Panther Point 6 port SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Panther Point SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Device 682f
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 07)
08:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 2230 (rev c4)