PP, you're gonna love it, I have a couple of machines running ubuntu and I've just loaded the live disk into the machine we're working on...and it's up and running. External monitor came on line with no problem.
disclaimer: I just started using ubuntu on my children's computers a couple weeks ago so my experience is limited...having some issues, for example, getting the network printer stabilized on one of them...
Looks like I'm going to learn a bit more....