Installing Debian (currently squeeze) on Toshiba Satellite L750-170

[Chris Evans <chrishold@psyctc.org>]

I hope this is the right list for what will probably be a series of questions.

I've used Debian for many years on desktop boxes for light www/Email server use on a simple home ADSL line and more recently on a hosted machine.  I've also used it on that and laptops for statistical analyses in the R system.  In the last two years I've tried, largely successfully, to make Debian my main laptop system.  All that means I'm fairly savvy about Debian, OSS and IT generally though IT is not my main skill nor job.  

I've now bought a Toshiba Satellite L750-170 laptop to replace the ageing Dell Lattitude E6500 on which I'd had no real problems with Debian (not quite true: never got the microphone working properly but otherwise it was fine: made great use of the graphics and suspended and restored fine.

I've now installed Squeeze on the Toshiba and can't get hiher resolution that 1024*768 and when I shut the lid the machine appears to suspend (I think) but when I re-open it looks from the indicator lights as if it is resuming but the screen stays blacked out and nothing I do gets me back in.  I've done a bit of web searching to try to find information about these issues but can't find anything.  Easy suspending and using more of the screen/graphics than 1024*768 are both really important to me so I think I have three questions:

1) General one: What is the approved way to sort out what hardware is in a machine and get that information onto the Debian HCL and to work out what works on it and what doesn't?

2) Specific 1: does anyone have any advice about how to get better graphics resolution?

3) Specific 2: what should I do to debug the blacked out resume?  I wonder if it is a graphics driver issue so may be linked to #2 or even go away if I could get better fit between Squeeze and the graphics hardware perhaps.

TIA,

Chris