Live USB boots quickly, goes online through a generic PCI wi-fi card (don't know chipset).
Preference edits work fine.
nouveau driver works great with 3 installed Nvidia 9500 cards. No visual artifacts anywhere, even the screen savers work without locking up.
Maya 13 Xfce 64-bit is fast all around, it's a shame the update servers are turning off this year. I'm gonna make a reasonably updated image and save it for future installations on customers' computers.