Your Macbook must have some serious problem. May be some overheat condition that clocks it down. My wife's Macbook (white, Core Duo) is not sluggish no matter what I throw at it.

The ATI thing may explain your driver problems, but on my last notebooks, Linux was even able to figure out my Broadcom wireless, which is quite an accomplishment. For the last two years, I have little to no driver problems, but, then, I won't buy a notebook with an ATI video subsystem and I do prefer units with hardware that is known to work under Linux (the Vaios are very compatible, as are most HPs and Dells).