This is on an Acer Aspire One 722 with AMD C60 and graphics included. It came with an unusable Linpus installation. I used an openSuSE 12.1 x86_64 live CD and installed with no problems.

Booting just allows to log in on a console. As root I can issue a "startx" command and work with KDE. As normal user "startx" is denied and "init 5" doesn't work either. I found no errors or hints in Xorg.log -- any ideas?

When you say "startx is denied," what exactly do you mean?

For testing, I would suggest creating a new user and logging in as the new user. If that login works, they likely something has gone screwy in your normal user's configuration files.

Permission denied. Maybe there was also a note saying that /sbin/startx seems to need root privileges but right now I'm not sure of that.

It can't be just one user. kdm is not coming up asking for a login. As far as I remember even X has not started yet, but there is no error in the log.

Hmm. This is sort of solved (though not truly and really). I can use "sudo kdm" and things run.

But. The whole installation is unstable insofar as it starts sometimes and often it does not (just hangs during boot after fsck'ing the last partition). I therefore installed the 32-bit openSuSE 12.1_i686-live -- no more hassle. Boot is okay, login screen comes up as it should, all is well.

Conclusion (tentatively): openSuSE 12.1_86_64-live is not up to it. I'd surmise the graphics unit of the AMD C60 APU is not truly "matched" by the 64-bit data and adress structures, but I can't prove it, of course. Since the machine has its maximum memory of 4 GB installed I don't really need a 64 bit OS. But I don't feel that the original problem is solved, so there is no solution for other members of LQ and I'll leave the thread open as it is...

No. That was due to a double change I did simultaneously.

When you do a search you'll find shortly that for an Acer Apire One "netboot" has to be enabled in the BIOS main menu and in the "boot" menu first BIOS boot device must be the "networkboot: Atheros..." (prior even to USB_HDD and HDD0 -- in this sequence). Well, I'll scrutinize this further and report if there is anything to report .

P.S.: This is one of the really few honest bugs in Linux. Why me and my machine? .