No X or Fn keys on a Vaio FZ4000E

Hi All,

I've been running suse SLED 10.0 (Or, its been running me) on an old dell desktop for a year or so without too much trouble and when my wife surprised me with a new Sony laptop (student loan money ;-)) I thought I would get under the hood a little and give Debian a try. I installed ETCH 4.03 from a DVD I picked up from cheapbites.com and ran into a little trouble.
I may be in a little over my head here. But, I have the luxury of using the Dell for email and homework, and spring break is around the corner. So, I have a little free time and I want to try and get a few things straightened out. Maybe I'll even learn a thing or two in the process.

I suppose some specs are in order.

Sony Vaio (laptop)
FZ4000E (as per the invoice),
PCG-3A1L (as per the sticker on the back)

T9300 chip

nVidia 8400M GT

Kernel version (as displayed when I F2 at boot): 2.6.18-6-amd64

So far, most of the installation seems to have come off OK.
Partitioning seems fine. The laptop will boot from the hard drive. My wired network card seems to be working (not sure about wireless). And, I can get to the command line without using a rescue disk.

But, that is about it.

I seem to be having at least two (unrelated?) problems.

1)
After boot I get "Failed to start X server."
Selecting view X output yields: "Fatal server error: no screens found"
Selecting view detailed X output yields a good bit more. It is a little too much to type (or post), but my card does not appear to be on the list at the end of the file. Interestingly, the GUI installer on the DVD seems to run fine.

2)
The Fn keys that control display brightness and suspend to disk do not seem to work.

I've read a little online about different approaches to both of these issues. But, it is a bit over my head. So I thought I could save myself some trouble by asking for help. It seems like both of these problems are solvable. But if it comes to it, I think I can return the laptop to Sony if I do so within the next ten days.

So, is this enough info to get started? And, what should my next step be?
Speaking of next steps, what should I be reading? The online docs I have seen so far seem great, but I think that I need to start with something more basic.

Thoughts?

Oh, one more question, will Debian support the T9300's power saving features?

Thanks,
Rob

Also, I posted this over in forums.debian.net as well. Not sure if that is uncool.