Hi,

I am wanting to give Debian a try as I like the 'free' ethos and am alkso attracted to the stability of it. I tried installing woody and got the base install happening no probs, but found that X hung on me. I have a S3 Savage4 video card, and noticed that the only driver available in the install menu was 'Savage 3' (I also tried VESA, which didn't work). I am new to Linux (from Windows via Mandrake), and would like to know what the best strategy is here, and am open to suggestions. My options seem to be:

1. Try to find a newer version of Xfree 86 that will support my video card. I am no programmer or sys. admin. but can follow technical instructions no probs and carry out a few command line configurations (eg. I have succesfully configured the LILO config file, and have compiled apps from .tgz). How does one select packages with apt from testing or unstable while still keeping a perdominantly woody install? is this unwise?

2. Start the install again from sarge or sid rather than from woody. How unstable are sarge and sid? Am I throwing out the baby with the bath water by trying one of these distros? One of my primary motivations for giving Debian a whirl is its stability. How do I maximize the stability of my system, while still catering for my more modern hardware.

3. Try another distro with a 'stable' reputation, like Slackware or RHEL

4. Any other sugestions...

I searched a bit, but sorry if this has already been covered on the group - please point me to the right thread if it has)

Cheers, Mark

i would say upgrade to testing but i think you can get it to work without testing:
try installing a new kernel first
Try as root

* make sure you have the latest packages
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

* install less in case you don't have it, it will help later
apt-get install less(in case it is not installed)

* scroll available kernel images with less
apt-cache search kernel-image|less

* page down and page up to see the list and Q when you are done
choose the latest kernel-image you can find for i386 or i686
apt-get install kernel-image-Version

* try to let X configure itself
XFree86 -configure

* copy the generated file to its default location
cp /root/XF86Config.new /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

* try to see if it worked
X -xf86config /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

if you see a screen with the last command, hit
Ctrl+ALT+Backspace to kill the GUI

logout and login as a user and type
startx

Hi

Have the same card in my machine
You can upgrade the xserver packages from testing to get it to work
Would recommend installing sarge, been using it for 6 months had no problems with stabiltity

Sls

you may want to start with a Sarge system. it is close to being the stable release. a Woody install is a pain in the neck. go to www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer to get an easy installer that should detect and configure all of your hardware. good luck.

Why would you reinstall with a Sarge installer when you've allready got Woody on your system. Just update the '/etc/apt/sources-list' to point to the Sarge repositories, 'apt-get update', 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. This will install the Sarge version.

Next install the X-Window system 'apt-get install x-window-system'.

Or if you have allready installed X, you can reconfigure it with 'dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86'.

Good luck.

Thanks everyone, particulalrly McCloud. This seems like the best advice. I'll give Sarge a go.