The above mail has my config file. However I notice that the log file shows "insufficient memory" and detects only 256K video RAM!!
As I said the Knoppix CD selects S3 savage4 86C370 as the video card, But in the Debian distro it is not supported though available in the list.
Honestly I am not so keen on graphic stuff and am quite happy to run this with 800x600 and 256 colours

Why can't Debian recognise the video card when all distros of Linux I have installed other than Debian Woody in this PC - which is my "experimental/adventurous/TADT" PC. Some of them are older than Woody too

But everything else works wonderfully. I have Apache, Zope, postgresql running. But for zope I need a frames enabled browser.....This means X-windows is a must, right?
I guess I could run this as my server and connect to it with another version of Linux on my clients which runs X.

Solved!
I found the driver for the video card from
The s3 savage video cards are not supported by Debian Woody.

http://www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html
There is a deb file.
dpkg -i debfile
Then i did
dpkg -reconfigure xserver -xfree86

Everything works, nicely now with windowmaker and Mozilla

Wonderful to have a trim, neat, fast. stable Debian Linux with everything I want configured booted and ready when I start
postgres, zope, apache, mozilla and windowmaker.

In other Debian installs or other Linuxes, it is impossible to get all these going with just one CD

It is EASY, installing Debian Woody with the simple base install no Tasktel and other stuff, then apt-get from CD.

Thanks to everyone. Special thanks to Tim Roberts who made the drivers available, and those in the forum who guided me. I hope this helps someone else to run Debian Woody with X.

Um, can you explain what the Debian "live file CDs" are and where you get them? I can't find them through google or on linuxquestions.org. Maybe I'm just too new.

Are these iso builds with the latest packages?
Where do you get them? (Debian.org says it doesn't carry "live" CD's, but I'm interested).

I just used Morphix's (www.morphix.org) Game iso to do a HD install. It worked, and I get to play all the games without much hassle, as well as have a browser and X.

But I have to agree that it isn't that stable (it is version 0.4, after all). I tried to dselect to install apache (removed from the Game iso to fit more games) and it doesn't work at all. I'm too new to figure it out.

My compromise is that my next project is to install Debian woody on another partition and to keep the Morphix HD install. The Morphix HD install takes less than a gig and gives me a back-up linux distro with things I like.

Libranet sounds intriguing...

There are no official Debian Live CDs. A live-CD will just run from a CD without installing. They can also be installed quite easily. ( I found that the official Woody is as easy to install jut recently-see above!).
The live CDs also have more upto date software than the offficial Woody. I am not sure about the official Sarge or unofficial Sarge and Sid ISOs available in the Debian site.

The live CDs that are used are
Knoppix - the best known
Morphix - more options to chose from, but less stable IMHO
Mepis - easiest to install and partition but needs over 128MB RAM

Cheers

Just an update - kind of staggering around blindly, I threw a copy of the Debian kernel into my Slack /boot and added it to lilo.conf awhile ago and got it to boot. Then tonight I poked around to see what kind of mess was in that partition and mc - which I always want around when I'm doing nothing but ls-cd-ls-cd - wasn't on there. 'Apt-get mc' didn't quite work. Checked the man page and 'apt-get install mc' told me to put in CD1 so I did, and got mc. Then I was able to go exploring. And then I decided to try X and staggered around with some config files - which I edited with vi for some reason, instead of mcedit - getting into the spirit of the whole thing, I guess. Anyway - I managed to fake enough of it to get X to load and I'm posting here from Mozilla 1.0 (deja vu all over again). I'm still pretty sure this is too screwed up to fix and I'll end up trying some of the help I've gotten in this thread for a fresh install but, until then, I'm going to see what I can do with this. Need to take a break from Slack problems and work on Deb problems for a change. *g*

Beautiful - recommending to family and friends

don't be afraid of tasksel
be afraid...be very afraid of dselect.

tasksel will give you general install packages, then use apt-get to install what you want beyond that.

Just a note about one of the great things about debian installs.
It seems like no one ever talks about this.
If you have a high speed internet connection it is really painless to install debian from only two floppy disks and then let it download the rest. Even the drivers.

If you want to try a Live CD implementation which allows you to later install to the hard disk, I recommend Mepis. It's also a Debian GNU/Linux system, based on Knoppix, but the disk installer is a bit more automatic and the system is a bit more compact. It boots and installs a bit quicker than Knoppix or Morphix, in my opinion, though all three are pretty good.

If you want to start wth a full system instead of a Live CD, I highly recommend starting wtih Libranet. Their base software is built off the testing tree at any given time, but they complement it with applications from stable and SID that have been tested and verified to work. Libranet is truly a complete system. You can usually try one release earlier and download it, then purchase the current release if you like it. For commercial systems, this one's the very best.

So if you want Live CDs, I recommend Mepis first, Knoppix second, and Morphix third (I've had some problems with certain Morphix releases, especially 0.4, that's why I put it third. If you want a complete system, I recommend Libranet.

I'm guessing that most of us here aren't the casual consumer, but if there are any out there in that category, then LindowsOS also deserves a look. It's based on Debian, too. With LindowsOS, the compelling thing is that you get a 10 minute initial installation that's incredibly easy, then from there, you can use the Lindows.com Click N Run Warehouse to get both freely available and commercial software. However, if you're cheap, you can also use the Debian mirror sites. So it turns out that it's also a quick and easy way to get into Debian.

One last commercial choice to consider for people who may be coming from a Windows orientation is to try out Xandros. It interoperates well wtih Windows, so if that's important to you, it may be worth considering, too.

For me, I use a heavily customized Libranet base system that I upgrade using Debian software. I've recently been experimenting with the Live CDs, too, hence my familiarity and recommendation of Mepis.

If all you're looking for is a quick entry point into Debian and you're not concerned about a company or support or anything else, then Mepis, in my opinion, is the way to go. If you want a full system, ready to go, that you can use for a long time, but still have the capability to upgrade whenever you want, go with Libranet.

Is debian sloppy? No, I don't think so given all the developers, all over the world, spanning 10yrs of work that has brought debian to where is is today. Actually, I think it is quite impressive that they have maintained a somewhat cohesive structure over this long period. Most volunteer organizations would have imploded by now.

In my own mind, I don't even consider debian to be linux anymore. There is linux and there is debian. When was the last time anyone read a How-To on how to do something the "RedHat Way"? Even the debian docs proudly mention how to things the "Debian Way". Debian has its own way to do everything from compiling a kernel to configuring fonts.

I have no problem with this but what a debian user soon discovers is that what they learn about linux using debian is *not* transferable to linux in general. I chuckle everytime someone writes that they learned so much about linux using debian. The fact is they probably learned a whole lot about debian but next to nothing about linux.

I used to think the debian install was sloppy. I recommend just installing the base system during the installation and apt-get'ing everything else later. You feel alot better about yourself.