New system for ubuntu - recommended display hardware?

[Chris G]

I'm considering moving to Ubuntu (for various reasons, see another
thread) and the easiest way to do this seems to me to be to buy a new
system, install on that and then migrate data and customisation across
from my existing Fedora system.

What are the 'easiest' display chips to use nowadays?  My current
system has an Nvidia card which is fairly well supported but has
caused me a few hiccoughs.  Is the Nvidia as easy as it gets or is
there anything better?

I'm not after amazing performance, I've no need to play games or
anything, but I do run a big[gish] display at 1600x1200 and I do want
to run Vmware or Virtualbox.

Any/all advice welcomed.

-- 
Chris Green