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wget
irssi
aptitude
vim
xmms2 (cli client)
rtorrent
git
ssh
screen
sudo
ffmpeg
iftop
netstat
iproute2
htop
grep
du
df
apropos

xrandr
shorewall
mplayer

It sounds like there is something seriously wrong. The Dell 1501 uses the ATI xpress 1150 chipset which has a Radeon X300. It should just work - 2d and 3d - with the Free "radeon" driver in just about any distro from the past few years.

Does Windows work on this machine? Have you tried running Memtest86+ on it? Does any Linux live cd work?