alright, setting off on a new journey

installed slack 9, booting it through cd for now, i login as root, type startx, hear the kde login sound but see nothing but some stripes of color on my monitor... kde doesn't show anything

i did see a bunch of "failed" messages as slack boots, i don't know how to scroll back up to read them, how would i do that?

how can i get X to start?

Configured X before you started it?

Shift PgUp

Shift+pgup to scroll up.

Sounds like you need to run xf86config or xf86cfg or something. (I never can remember what the damn things are called.) Your monitor and X aren't getting along.

If you've got a reasonably recent monitor (VESA 2+) try enabling framebuffer support. Need more details and I suck with monitors and X configuration, anyway.

Good luck, though. Slack's great when you get there.

-- Argh. This is like the 5th time today I've posted something right after it's already been said. Gonna change my LQ name to Redundancy Check.

Also, use 'adduser' to create a new user for you. Running root for everything is generally a bad idea as you can mess up your system alot easier than if you are just a regular user. The command 'xf86config' at the console will walk you through step by step in creating a basic XF86Config file. The command 'xf86cfg' is the graphical equivalent.

thx for the input, i'll have to try in the morning

i'll be back then!

Just to confirm that is the problem - you can also mess it up after having it working so get your monitor handbook out to check what the settings should be - trying to get the refresh rate up to 85hz I messed something up and then had to go back through xfree86cfg to get x back up and running.