It sort of just works. Get yourself a big USB thumb drive (I use 8 and 16G) and boot off it. You'll answer a few questions to install.

I like the Thinkpads because they are so cheap ($200-300) gets you an i7 and 8-12GB RAM. The CPUs are compatible with SmartOS for KVM guests.

All that said, I really should write a definitive guide of how to operate SmartOS coming from the linux ecosystem.