I now have a working GUI which will suffice for what I need it to do. had to specify BusID in an xorg config file had to set nomodeset in the boot options

Had to use Arch Linux LTS kernel due to some wierd bug with newer kernels and Core2 Duo processors (Installing Arch was actually done on another machine with the hard drive connected via USB since I couldn't boot the macbook directly - installing arch-install-scripts allowed me to do so) Arch Linux installed with 32-bit grub (automatically booted from rEFIt so I'm not sure even the 32-bit was necessary) rEFIt installed via mac os to allow me to boot to other os's. Upon specifying the Bus ID in an XOrg config file, X now starts perfectly fine with the correct resolution and works reasonably well for running off of a framebuffer.

I deleted the config file and X started complaining that I need to tell it a Bus ID to use for the display output. Due to my messing about with Intel driver settings, there was still an XOrg config file that was stopping X from starting.

Arch linux macbook 2010