After a lot of digging and some tweaking, I *finally* have Ubuntu playing nicely on my work laptop, so wanted to post my findings here in hopes it can help someone else.
My video chipset:
$ lspci | grep Graphics
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
