I am but a humble sailor, who is drawn to shiny objects. The latest shiny object was suse 10, whose iso I downloaded and burned to a dvd. I loaded it on my dell inspiron 3700 with first Gnome and now KDE. This post is all about the screen. When it boots, all seems well with the world: the green lizard, the four or six vertically spaced icons to the right of the lizard....then all goes blank/black. Then there is the boot up music. The only way that I can get the screen to work is to boot in fail safe mode, login as root, and type in "init 5" Strange and mysterious things happen, which end in me seeing a desktop.... What in the --- is happening and how can I communicate to the computer that there is a better way to get to a desktop.

thank you

I would try having a look hear to see if there any info\cure\work arounds for your problem

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html

Tim

No luck. What does changing from init 5 to init 3 or to root have to do with the system.