i guess both mandrake and redhat will be okay with vaio.
I am using redhat8.0 with dell inspiron 8200.
graphic card GeForce 440 Go.
If you use nvidia's card, u better download drivers from nvidia.
another thing is if you want to dual boot, no problem with GRUB in MBR. but when u are going to mess up with partition thing some reason, you should go with first boot section , such as /dev/hda5 ...
nowadays, using linux on laptop is really easy job.
you could install Solaris 9 on your laptop. Unfortunately, dell laptop is not compatible with solaris 9.( i mean you should hack around a lot