So I installed NetBSD10. Veeeery anti-climactic, after expecting a big fight...
Everything works (modulo 11g wifi speed + haven't checked battery life).
No acpi issues, laptop keeps itself cool without running any daemons to help it.
Graphics accel. is fine.
Installation took 2 minutes, booted to a fully working system.
I even like how ctwm was set up by default, literally changing nothing! Not even root colour.
This was not my experience with NetBSD 9. Great job, NetBSD team!
/thread closed. This thing works like a charm