On the flight to London I just found out how to do hybernation with the
2.6.17 kernel on my debian installation. Its really easy:

* apt-get install uswsusp
* note what device you are swapping on
* configure that device in /etc/uswsusp.conf
* run update-initramfs -u (/usr/share/doc/uswsusp/README.Debian)
* edit /etc/acpi/ibm-hibernate.sh if required to show

#!/bin/bash

sync
/sbin/hwclock --systohc

/usr/sbin/s2disk

/sbin/hwclock --adjust
/sbin/hwclock --hctosys


now you can hibernate with Debian, its fast, so its better than the
hibernation I had on my old 2.6.15 or so..

P.S: I also figured out how to change the keyboard layout on the console:

loadkeys us

does the trick