its fully functional.... down to the penny. You can create a psn account for all 3 territories if you want (i have one psn account for europe and another for usa).
The only thing you have to do is to buy a power cable to fit your country plug, because ps3 power supply is universal (and internal, no power brick as x360)
my only doubt is if bluray movies you buy from the oversees will work in the imported ps3.
About the wheel, only if the games support it. If you have a logitech, it will play if the game supports it.
About linux, sony only allows access to one of the memory pools and cell processor. No graphics accelerator. Its good to run internet and office applications. It also plays divx and etc, but i would wait for sony to give access to rsx first.