The 10 minute geek
I have been enjoying my laptop... five minutes here, 1/2 hour there, ten minutes here. For some reason I can't seem to get a good geek session with my new $50 toy.
I originally installed Mandriva 2009.0 but decided to let it do the upgrade thing on Friday evening and let it update itself to 2009.1.
Upon reboot, I got nothing more than a blank screen with a blinking line cursor. Gah. Stupid frickin' video issues.
I used my desktop to look up the solution. Two commands: XFdrake, and "service dm restart". Please keep in mind that Linux was running. I just had no desktop. Unlike Microsoft Windows, the desktop is not part of the operating system. I used Alt+F6 to switch to another terminal session and logged in. I ran "startx" just to get a clue as to what the error could be. That was one heck of a screen dump! I am still not sure what the actual problem was but I figured it was similar to the problem I was having before with the Metisse 3D desktop. XFdrake showed that the wrong Xwindows driver was selected. I chose the generic ATI (my chip is a ATI Mobility Radeon X600) and did a test. It worked great.
I then restarted the desktop manager using "service dm restart" and all was well. In fact, all was even better since the system sounds worked correctly!
The next geek tasks are to use a peer-to-peer LAN cable to download all the stuff from my old laptop to my new. Then I will load Windows 2000 (I wish I had a copy of NT4!!!) onto it so I can install my daughter's computer games on it. She can have that clunker.
I originally installed Mandriva 2009.0 but decided to let it do the upgrade thing on Friday evening and let it update itself to 2009.1.
Upon reboot, I got nothing more than a blank screen with a blinking line cursor. Gah. Stupid frickin' video issues.
I used my desktop to look up the solution. Two commands: XFdrake, and "service dm restart". Please keep in mind that Linux was running. I just had no desktop. Unlike Microsoft Windows, the desktop is not part of the operating system. I used Alt+F6 to switch to another terminal session and logged in. I ran "startx" just to get a clue as to what the error could be. That was one heck of a screen dump! I am still not sure what the actual problem was but I figured it was similar to the problem I was having before with the Metisse 3D desktop. XFdrake showed that the wrong Xwindows driver was selected. I chose the generic ATI (my chip is a ATI Mobility Radeon X600) and did a test. It worked great.
I then restarted the desktop manager using "service dm restart" and all was well. In fact, all was even better since the system sounds worked correctly!
The next geek tasks are to use a peer-to-peer LAN cable to download all the stuff from my old laptop to my new. Then I will load Windows 2000 (I wish I had a copy of NT4!!!) onto it so I can install my daughter's computer games on it. She can have that clunker.