I'm rebuilding a Gateway Solo 1450 and would like to put a version of linux on it, but am having some strange problems. I have some experience with Red Hat and SuSE, but I wanted to look at other distros.

I am attempting to load Fedora 11 and after the initial load, the video is doing stranging things. It boots all right, but as I use the menus and start going into and out of different windows, the menus disappear/reappear. For example, in Fedora, the menus are "Applications," "Places" and "System." When it boots, all three are there. When I click on Applications-Accessories-Calculator, the "Applications" menu text disappears.

If I click where it should be, it reappears.

When I open a terminal and begin to type, say, "ifconfig eth0," it appears as "if onfig eth0" and when I hit enter, the "c" reappears.

Lastly, as I move in and out of windows. the text becomes smudged. The Window header starts to run together ... it looks like ink that had water dripped on it. If I reboot, the Gateway splash is crisp, the initial screens are crisp, etc. It's just that as the machine is used the video becomes distorted.

Sometimes, a particular letter will become illegible, such as all the "M's" on the menu will become three vertical bars, or the "s" letter will smudge ... and it will only be that letter, but each instance.

Conversely, the default Fedora backsplash is crisp and remains crisp, this is just within the windows and on menu options.

Has anyone seen anything similar before?

TIA.
Dave

Probably intel driver issue. Are you running Compiz on it?

I will check ... this is my first try with Fedora 11, but I also tried Unbuntu 9.04 and ran into the same thing.

If Compiz is a default application, then yes, I probably have it running. Is it a known problem-child (I'm assuming so, based on it being your first question, but wanted to ask)?

TIA,
Dave

Compiz provide the snazzy desktop effects like the fading & various animations. Lately the intel driver was changed significantly, causing many issues with compiz. You can try turning off compiz. Try looking under System -> Appearance -> Desktop Effects. (That's where it is in Ubuntu, not sure about Fedora)

Try to do an online update of your distro. It might pull in some bugfixes.

You might also add this option into your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Under the "Device" section