My Laptop Linux

I recently acquired a used Gateway M305CRV. I've installed Linux and am quite happy. Currently installed are: (K)Ubuntu, Elive and SUSE. I've added a Belkin F5D7010 Wireless PCMCIA card which was easily set up using ndiswrapper. The main kicker on this setup is the broken video BIOS. The computer will not use the native 1024x768 with any X setup I've been able to locate. It complains that 1024x768 is not available and renders 800x600. I've used a commercial driver from XIG to circumvent the problem. I settled for the cheapest 'desktop' driver and found that it keys off the IP address of the main network card, so I've set up eth0 with a static setting to accomodate that.