I am having trouble getting X to start (screen just goes blank) on a variety of distros (FC3, umbuntu, knoppix).

In FC3 for example, the installer comes up in text mode fine but when it tries to start X the screen just goes blank. If I connect with an external monitor I can toggle the FN CRT/LCD and I can see X has started on the external monitor. If i then toggle it back to the laptop LCD I can then see the display fine on the laptop. This same thing happens with all the distros mentioned above so it seems to be specific to the onboard video and I see the same thing with a coworkers laptop.

I have tried starting the linux with the following <code>linux acpi=off apm=off</code> but the above still occurs. Any ideas?

I had the same problem. I downloaded the latest kernel from kernel.org and compiled it. I also found that it runs the i810 driver for the i915GM that is in my D610.
It took me a few times before I got it working, and unfortunatly I can't retrace my steps for you.

I did try to run the dripkg install, but it didn't seem to work. So I copied the source from that package to the source tree for my kernel and then was able to get it working. I'm running kernel 2.6.12.2 now.

Also, I just used the kernel 2.6.12-1.1390_FC4 and it also works with the i810 video driver. I'm switching back to the FC4 generic kernels.

Thanks...
Ill give FC4 a shot...

Well, it looks like FC4 out of the box has the same problem... continuing to search for a solution..

Any luck on solving this? I've found a few threads on a few boards, and I've posted my own, no one has a definitive solution. I have the D610 and the dock (the cheaper one without its own video) and I cannot get dual display working properly. I have two 19" 1280x1024 flat panels, one hooked to DVI and one VGA. I have two problems, but I'm positive they are related. The first one is if I boot to a framebuffered console while docked, the DVI connected monitor works until the framebuffer loads, then it loses signal. I can then blindly use i810switch to get the monitor connected to the VGA port on. If I don't use a framebuffer I can get both monitors on showing a cloned console. Now when starting X, I have gotten it to where dual display is working, the problem is when I start X, the DVI monitor goes blank, and the laptop's screen turns on! So I have a functional dual display with the VGA monitor and the laptop screen, but I need it on the DVI monitor. I'm running Gentoo, with a 2.6.15 kernel, xorg 6.8.99 with the i915_dri patch. Has anyone out there solved this?

If you it will give you the needed info to add to your xorg.conf file to get both displays working, also alot of other useful info.

Thanks mate, I stumbled upon an i810 man file the other day, who knew there were man files for video drivers , and I've got xorg working great. The problem was option "MonitorLayout", I needed "DFP,CRT" instead of "LFP, CRT" (DFP for DVI, LFP for laptop's display, CRT for VGA). I haven't tackled the framebuffer yet, I'll see what I can figure out today from that man file.