@Steven Hewitt

I'm not sure what distro you're using, but when I somehow managed to set the resolution on my Ubuntu desktop to 2000 something on my poor little CRT screen (which maxed out at 1024x768), it black screened for a bit, waited about 15 seconds and then returned to its original resolution.

It similarly had no issues with me removing, replacing and adding new hardware to it and unlike Windows, it simply worked with my HP printer (Windows starts nagging about needing drivers which, surprise suprise, you can't install through the Windows wizard but have to use an annoying HP installer for) and unlike Windows Vista, which I tried to install on this machine (3 days wasted trying to get the bloody thing to work properly) it installed in about 15 minutes flat (On a pre-formatted drive that is)