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sdavis78 06-30-2007 08:39 AM

Installing linux should not be this hard
 
I have tried 4 linux installations, suse 10.2,unbunto 7.04, mandriva 2006, and now fedora 7. I use to run linux suse on my pc when I had the asus p5ld2 p945 motherboard with no problem. I upgraded to the asus P965 chipset and core 2 in dec 2006. They all hang when loading xserver usually with a corupted video screen. suse and mandriva after installation when booting into the graphical interface, and ubunto and fedora at the begining of installation when loading the graphical interface. I have been patiently waiting for newer versions hoping this issue is fixed, and tried fedora hoping with the latest version it would work.

All my other hardware is the same and has not changed except the motherboard, processor, and memory. I'm using the 7800GT graphics card. There is nothing wrong with my hardware. Various versions of windows works every time. It least windows installs a generic driver so you can boot into a graphical interface.

If anybody has a quick and easy fix without pulling teeth, I'm all ears and I'll give it one more try. But installing the linux distributions on newer hardware is a nightmare, and like my title says, I should not be this hard. I've wanting to see linux kick microsofts butt for a long time and go main stream. Is this ever going to happen? It should just install and work. Although it does this on older hardware just fine. ( older motherboards). I don't mean this thread to bash linux, I just want it to work.

Hern_28 06-30-2007 10:09 AM

Hehhe.
 
Same problem I had. Either have to find workarounds or you could try slackware, try the huge or the test install to see if it supports your hardware. I have a new system too and can't get most distro's to boot the install cd's much less install hehhe.

Gluck man

GregLee 06-30-2007 11:44 AM

If the graphics-style install doesn't work for you, use the text-style install. Fedora gives a choice -- after the "boot:" prompt you can type "linux text", Ubuntu has a text install disk (or so I've heard). Slackware has only a text install (as of version 10, anyway).

pixellany 06-30-2007 12:00 PM

I did a quick Google and saw that other people had issues with that card---but, the way I read your post, you did not change the card. True?

sdavis78 06-30-2007 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pixellany
I did a quick Google and saw that other people had issues with that card---but, the way I read your post, you did not change the card. True?

That is correct. Suse 9.0, and 10.0, mandrake 10, all worked fine with my 7800GT.

OralDeckard 06-30-2007 06:24 PM

You lamented the lack of a generic driver. Well, vesa is that generic driver.
I am using Asus MBs on three Fedora installations, and have to use the vesa driver on one because it is a 64 bit Fedora with an ATI card, and ATI produced a buggy driver for 64 bit.
(64 bit dual core AMD, not core duo)

Use the text install to get a minimal install, then you can put a vesa string in your xorg.conf and go graphical. It looks like this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

After installation you will be re-downlaoding a ton of stuff as updates anyway, so why bother seleting a lot with that graphical interface at installation time anyway.

Peter_APIIT 06-30-2007 11:04 PM

Try the Fedora 7 live version and try to install to hard disk.

sdavis78 07-01-2007 06:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OralDeckard
You lamented the lack of a generic driver. Well, vesa is that generic driver.
I am using Asus MBs on three Fedora installations, and have to use the vesa driver on one because it is a 64 bit Fedora with an ATI card, and ATI produced a buggy driver for 64 bit.
(64 bit dual core AMD, not core duo)

Use the text install to get a minimal install, then you can put a vesa string in your xorg.conf and go graphical. It looks like this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

After installation you will be re-downlaoding a ton of stuff as updates anyway, so why bother seleting a lot with that graphical interface at installation time anyway.


I know there is a vesa driver, but linux does not install it by default. None of these distros give you an option during installation to install a vesa driver instead, by just clicking on the option in a graphical interface, and making a change to the installation.

You would think if there was a big problem with video drivers in the new distros, which there is, that the software developer's / community would put the vesa option in, or install it by default until they can fix it.

Now I can try the text mode, but I have know idea where the conf files are located in linux. Also if I have to use command line commands in text mode like back in the old DOS days, I am not very familiar with that either. So I would need exact instructions on how to do it. I am an experienced Windows user and even with the old DOS, and I can get around the linux graphical interface pretty good, but the command line stuff in linux, I am not good at all, need to still learn that end of it. But that being said, all the other user's out there that use windows and can barely do that, will not touch linux if they have to do command line stuff to fix a problem.

Anyway if you want to give me some more of an explanation on how to do the text mode thing, then get the graphical interface working, I'll give it a try. Thanks

OralDeckard 07-01-2007 12:35 PM

You're absolutely right. There should be an option during installation. Quite a few thing require the use to be pretty technically proficient and pretty patient. But since a lot of people are working very hard to give me free a superiour OS to anything else available, I'm going to work at being patient.

Where I work, a lot of requests made of me are reasonable, obvious and straight forward. And often employees wonder why I take so long getting around to it. Well, the only thing I can tell them is that, as obvious and maybe even easy as their fix may be, there really are a lot of more critical things, I have to get done. I have to prioritize. And since The Devs are actually getting the thing fixed up to be the next release of the very expensive Red Hat Enterprise Linux, not making sure that the users of the beta version have a nice experience, I'll give them a little room and prevail upon the user community for some very apprecianted free help.

OK, the standard place in all Linux distributions to find the system configuration files is in /etc.
They are pure text files, not cleverly hidden, encrypted crap in a "Registry." What you are looking for is /etc/x11/xorg.conf. That file addresses your peripherals, such as keyboard, mouse, monitor, video driver, etc. (no pun intended :) )

If you have no graphical interface, and are working from text input only, you will need a text editor to do that with. The only one I can find that works reasonably well at this point is VIM.

VIM is not at all user friendly. You may want to get used to it now, before you need it, or find a better one. For without a GUI, it is your editor that gets you there.

Though Linux backs up your previous version every time you alter a text file, putting ~ on the end of it, you might consider making another backup yourself so it doesn't get wiped out the next time you do a save.

OK, open /etc/X11/xorg.conf, save it as xorg-Original.conf. Now close it and open xorg.conf again, then look it over. You'll see a "Section" for each thing it configures. In order to replace your current video driver with vesa, make its section look like this:
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Yes, you can copy it from this post and past it directly into your xorg.conf file over the top of what you have there.

Save and exit.

After you reboot it will come up looking for the vesa driver. I believe it to be already installed, just waiting to be called. But if that is not true you can install it and try again.

Now when you reboot you should have pretty nice graphics.

But in the event this fix was not good, Linux will complain, then go through a few attempts as it retrieves xorg.conf~ and saves it back as xorg.conf and tries again.

Then you're back to square one, with your editor, to try again.
But I believe this is the fix you need.

Oh, one more thing. Here is another section you may want to pay attention to:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
modes "1280x1024" "1600x1200" "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Note that I can only select tree resolutions. Add here the resolutions you want to be able to select.

Let me know what happens. I'm rooting for you.

armyNinja 07-01-2007 09:52 PM

I am not sure if you helped the originator, but you sure helped me.

I could not find info on this problem anywhere. I have a Desktop and I was trying to install redHat Linux on a VM. The display was all scrambled and grey and pixilated and unreadable. I was able to see enough to login as root and then right click on the background and select the top option (which I know is open terminal).

I then ran an "init s" command and I got a readable screen. But I could not figure out what to do about the graphics. I changed the graphics driver to VESA and it worked like a charm. Now that I am in, I went to change my video resolution size in Xwindows and I only have the option for 640x480... Any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

sdavis78 07-02-2007 10:59 AM

Thanks for the info. I have seen that file before. So that would also most likely work with a different version linux also, correct? For example when I do a suse 10.2 install, this problem doesn't happen until after the final reboot into the OS. So I could possibly go in the text mode with that OS and make changes in that file. Only problem I would have is doing the command line stuff. It would be nice to have a reference of commands for linux. I have a hard time just changing from one folder to another and viewing the files. I know this is a Fedora thread, but I just thought I'd ask.

GregLee 07-02-2007 01:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sdavis78
Only problem I would have is doing the command line stuff. It would be nice to have a reference of commands for linux.

"help" gives a summary of shell commands. "apropos ___" may guide you to a command for doing ____. You can "ls" the usual directories for commands -- /usr/bin, /bin, /usr/sbin, ... -- and use "man ___" or "info ___" to find out how to use a command.

pixellany 07-02-2007 02:42 PM

One of the real power tools is "man -k <keyword>" eg "man -k file" for all commands relating to files

Also try "info coreutils"

OralDeckard 07-02-2007 05:54 PM

Well thank you ArmyNinja. I'm not usually so forward with help because I am a mud level gnubie myslef, and don't want to muddy the waters where a Linux veteran can do a much better job, but when I see someone bouncing down the same bumpy road I have just trod, and I know what got me through, well,

OK, for the other resolutions, see the last part of my thread. You can simply copy from the thread and paste into your /et/x11/xorg.conf file.

PS. Are you really an army ninja ?
(spoken in the same tone as my daughter when she was 5, upon meeting a National Guardsman just before Christmas; "Are you a aoaf" ?

OralDeckard 07-02-2007 05:58 PM

Well I guess I should be more careful about suggesting that you copy and paste from the screen.
That should work fine, but notice while you are in the conf file that it is arraneged nicely, with tabs to make it all line up nice. Well, When I copied and pasted it into this thread, something awful happened to it, and it got all scrunched up, like all the tabs or extra spaces got removed. So you might paste it in, then look at the examples above and below and put in some tabs to make it look intelligible. No point settling for a fix that looks like crap.


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