nVidia and FC2, FC3, Mandrake, Debian
 

Hello,

I use Linux almost daily now and everything works fine, Mandrake can even properly handle my Intel Graphics Chipset. :)

I have a friend now who got overexcited about Linux and wants to get into it too.
He has a pc which should be perfectly fine to run a Linux distro.
The problem is though, although I'm able to instal Linux on his machine, I can't get a GUI.
When the installation finishes, the pc reboots and we go into Linux, at the moment were the welcome screen should appear, everything goes black and random colour lines appear on the screen. :confused:
I guess it is a problem linked to his nVidia Graphic card but I don't have a clue how to fix it.
Someone suggested to get the nVidia drivers, but if i can't get a GUI, I can't install 'em...

This problem happens with any distro I've tried, Debian, FC2, FC3 and Mandrake 10.0 :(

Can anybody tell me how to fix this problem cause it's really anoying and i'd rather have the guy use Linux than Windows....

Thanx

You could try booting into a multi-user runlevel without X (on Slackware this is 3), then you only have the CLI so you could try editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf and testing the configuration before applying the changes permanently.

If he has onboard graphics + a nvidia card try to disable the onboard in the bios if you are using the card.