Debian Hardware :: Bios To Find Out That Only 2 Settings To Choose Between "off" And "last State"

I bought my previous laptop without thinking about whether linux would run or not, I ran into a lot of ton of trouble and had to use ndiswrapper for the wireless and I had to wait year before a patch came so the monitor could be used, and 1 year before it ran stable (back then I used ubuntu). I have a medion computer, their consumer service are very nice, however I fried the hard drive, and when I got the computer back the wireless card weren't visible from linux... I then went into the bios to find out that there were only 2 settings to choose between "off" and "last state", and last state apparently also meant off... in windows both off and last state could be turned into "on" by clicking Fn + F7... but this did not change the bios setting and therefore linux wireless were still off (I know it sounds strange).

Anyway My girlfriend needs a windows computer for gaming (and all of out computers run only linux with the exception of mine which dual boots), so I have desided to buy a new one. My main question is this: which laptop manufactures play nice with linux... I have heard only bad things about dell costumer service, and I want to buy a laptop that I can return w/o to much hassle if it doesn't perform as I am hoping...

My second question is, is there any way to check whether the graphics card and such are compatible with linux ahead of time, (w/o acualy buying it where you can do lspci and then submit it to some webpage) 3rd are there anyway to check whether the fn + key buttons and webcamp works ahead of time (this is only of minor importance, as I find that generally the sound up and brightness up/down works, and that's the most useful)