crazy. I loaded PuppyLinux with Unetbootin...
wireless card worked natively, after running the network wizard. ridiculously easy to set up.
going to sleep now, will explore puppylinux more tomorrow. apparently you can get the same window manager that gOS has on Puppy. if so.....I'm freakin set.
Nice! I still say try Xubuntu though. Ubuntu's community support makes it much easier to get things working.