Top of the morning everyone,

I had been happily running Etch for about a year, when a apt-get dist-upgrade left my system in pieces. In particular, Xfree86 to Xorg was all messed up; the system was working, but not the GUI.
So I gave a couple of other distros a try, they are nice, but I'll stick with Debian.

The question: I am running a basic dell demension 2400 P4 with a 64mb Nvidia PCI Graphic card, GeForce MX 420. All of which worked nicely previously with Etch, that is before the update of Xfree86 to Xorg. I am thinking of giving the Etch beta 3 a try. I looked at the known issuses and I think it looks safe. Any ideas?

Thanks
EEK.

The only way you get Xfree86/Xorg issues is if you upgrade from Sarge to Etch. A fresh install of Etch should give you no problems.

I've been very happy with Etch beta 3. I did a clean install of beta 3 and have not had any issues with it. Etch beta 3 is a winner:-)

agreed.....i had much problems upgrading from Sarge to Etch...but fresh install works perfect...

Okay, etch beta 3 it is. I'll give it a try right now.

Alright, I did the install under expert only so I could choose the specifications for my monitor, a Dell E151FPb, nothing really intersting, and the result is: X is still not working. I did the dpkg -reconfigure -a xserver-xorg and everything that I can think of is setup up correctly, or at least as safe as could be. But X is still really messed up. For example, when I did the reconfigure, the end result shot out something to the effect of: Xorg has been customizied, changes will not be written.

I've been hung up on this on for a while, I am thinking of just installing sarge, but I am worried of what is going to happen when etch is released as the stable version; am I going to loose my system again?

Any ideas are welcome.

Thanks for the help,
EEK

Post about this much of your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file

Section "Device"
Identifier "intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device"

Driver "i810"
BusID "PCI:1:6:0"
End Section

Sectin Monitor
ID Dell E151PFB

options dpms
End Section

Section Screen
ID Default Screen
Device intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device"
Monitor Dell E151FPb
Defualt Depth 24
Subsection Display
Depth 4
Modes 1024x768 blah blah....

I know that the driver is incorrect, it shold be nv
As well, the device is wrong for the screen, but I am not able to change it.

EEK

Sure you can. If you're not comfortable with vi use nano.

As root ... nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

For the time being, change only the driver ... to "vesa"

Save xorg.conf and reboot ... if that works better we're off to a good start, but as near as I can tell xorg is not recognizing your Nvidia card ... that's an issue for after you get some kind of X working.

Well, I'll be damned: veas did not work, though nv did. I am not sure as to why it did not work through dpkg -reconfigure, but that doesn't really matter too much now.

That helps, thanks everone
Thanks richk
EEK