MandrivaThis Forum is for the discussion of Mandriva (Mandrake) Linux.
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So I figured I'd give this linux hoohah a shot, and heard good things about Mandriva, so decided to dual boot with WinXP. I installed it just fine, went to start up, and on what I believe shouldve been the login screen, I get a vomit of colors in a corrupt screen. I popped the CD back in to check to see if I clicked something wrong when choosing my graphics card. It was already selected on Geforce 4 (generic). I have a FX5500, so I switched it to Geforce FX (generic) and gave it a test. Failure, same problem. Im more or less an idiot when it comes to linux, I know barely enough to log in as root and how to open a terminal. Any help at all would be appreciated.
Forgot to add: When the screen goes corrupt, everything locks up but my mouse. I can move it around fine, but the keyboard doesnt respond. Cant Ctrl+alt+del, cant even toggle the num/cap/scroll lock
It sounds like a common bug with some Nvidia drivers and the frame buffer. When the system starts up there should be an option in the boot loader for 'linux-nonfb' or something, try selecting that. You can make it the default once you've booted using the Mandrake Control Centre - http://doc.mandrivalinux.com/Mandrak.../drakboot.html
I popped the CD back in to check to see if I clicked something wrong when choosing my graphics card. It was already selected on Geforce 4 (generic). I have a FX5500, so I switched it to Geforce FX (generic) and gave it a test.
Was this what you did when you got the garbled image? Did you try it with the driver that Mandriva chose for you?
If you just want to get up and running, but with no bells or whistles, then Select the Standard VESA video card. that should at least get you into the x server. It will be a little easier later on to test things.
You're absolutely right. Unfortunately Mandriva played a trick on all of us by delivering an unfinished product, the 2006 version. There seems to be a problem with the part of the system that takes care of the display.
Now I hope that wont disgust you to the point of not giving linux a fair shot. I can advise you to try the the last version of the Fedora distro, extremely friendly user or the ubuntu distro, very popular ourdays.
Now, if you absolutely want to try Mandriva, istall instead the 2005 LE or Mandrake Linux 10.2.
I actually think that Mandriva 2006 is a better product than 2005 LE or 10.2. Mandriva 2006 auto-detects most hardware.
With one exception. You do need to know the specs for your video card. When you get to the summary screen in the installation process you will need to click on your video card set-up and configure it if the summary screen shows that your video card is not configured (high-lighted in red).
That is the only draw back in the install process for newcomers that I can see. I'm a long time Slackware user; I'm running Mandriva 2006 as a work station on one of my PCs. I also have one of my PCs set-up as an Apache server with 2006.
No distro is perfect, but, Mandy keeps improving with each release.
Unfortunatly, the problem is a bit more complicated that that: go make a tour in Mandriva forums: even Mr. Alan Williamson, site administrator at Mandriva aknlowledges that there are issues with 2006 distro, including serious problems with XOrg 6.9, it's not a question of "knowing the specs of your video card" as you say.
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