Vaio vs Linux

Been trying to put Linux on my old Vaio and it kept failing... I tried with my regular monitor and it just worked fine. It's a pain all these "special" monitors, they only work for one purpose and one purpose only (i.e. tough for the rest). So now I think I'll have to buy a monitor switcher for a few thousand yen for the trouble... The only problem now is that I can't install the trial Oracle database because it requires 1GB in memory and the Vaio machine only has... 0.19GB! If it's not one thing, it's another. But at least Linux works!! (not much of a feat, mind you)