Well, is there an LUG near you? My experience is that problems like this are from one of two sources:
1) Bad drivers from the hardware OEM - most have lousy Linux support
2) Bad documentation, a lot of what is available assumes that you know what you are doing already
An expert (which I am not) can get just about any hardware working with Linux, and with luck your local LUG will have a bunch of people who can do this sort of setup in their sleep.
Another option is to try Dell - they offer Ubuntu pre-installed on some models, and while this is an older machine it's possible that they might have what you need.
Ubuntu
Well, is there an LUG near you? My experience is that problems like this are from one of two sources:
1) Bad drivers from the hardware OEM - most have lousy Linux support
2) Bad documentation, a lot of what is available assumes that you know what you are doing already
An expert (which I am not) can get just about any hardware working with Linux, and with luck your local LUG will have a bunch of people who can do this sort of setup in their sleep.
Another option is to try Dell - they offer Ubuntu pre-installed on some models, and while this is an older machine it's possible that they might have what you need.