since tc 2.9rc4 and the work made by the team in order to solve the libc issues, you can use tc or mc on the gecko netbook without difficulty; there are still some extensions that might not work as expected (for me the gtk1 version of sylpheed), but for most extensions, tc behaves nicely on the gecko.
Issues which remain:
- sound: the alsa modules provided for the kernel 2.6.29 are not working with the sound chip in the gecko; all drivers are there, but you need to use a patch provided by deviceonchip.com;
- vga out: here too, you have to use the patch provided by deviceonchip.com; vga out works only with Xorg 7.*, not Xvesa
These limitations are not that important for me because i am using the gecko as an office box only, and i don't need to play with sound, video and other displays/projectors. As a fairly basic netbook, the gecko does its job well with tinycore/microcore, and given the size of the os, it behaves much more quickly than with any other distributions i tried. With kernel improvement, a better experience can be expected. Definitely worth the buy.