it sounds like there is definatley something wrong with your 21" monitor, is it still under garantee? as for the second problem, there must be a way to change the screen resolution without going in to xp, not sure how though
"IDC estimates that Linux ships on at least 25% of new servers operating system ships worldwide today."
just did a quick google search, thats from http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/zseries/os/linux/facts.html
mine takes up 545mb and considering all i have is one video, thats quite a lot really. Fortunately Eric Johnson said that the new steam will have more efficient disk space usage