This page is about my experiences getting Linux to run on a Gateway 7215gx. It's currently very incomplete and not edited as much as it ought to be.
I had trouble getting the network card working under Debian, and the Gnoppix and Slax live disks. Slax was able to obtain an IP address, if I invoked dhcpcd manually, but could not send or recieve any packets (it has a different dhcp client than Gnoppix and Debian, it's possible I could have gotten those to obtain an IP with a bit more effort). I was able fix these problems by disabling the "Legacy USB Support" in the BIOS. Don't ask me what that has to do with Ethernet cards...
The wireless card is supported by the bcm43xx driver. However, it does not appear to be supported well, and I have had many problems with it.
Touchpad worked just fine under a 2.4 kernel. Under the 2.6 kernel I upgraded to I had to load the psmouse module. It's possible that it is already compiled into your kernel. YMMV.
I was never able to get suspend working consistently.
Sound works. However, I had trouble with it before. I'm not sure what changed to make it work.
Hopefully this will have been of some use to you, even if it was just confirming that getting Linux running on the 7215gx is possible.