"Kent West" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Brian Coiley wrote: > > > Many thanks for your reply. I really appreciate your efforts to > > help. Unfortunately, you have overestimated my abilities! I started > > on this literally just yesterday, and doing anything at all is > > requiring a great deal of research and trial-and-error! Specifically: > > > > > > As others have suggested, I'd upgrade to Sarge or Sid; Woody is (imo) > unusably old for a desktop system.
OK, I'll look into doing the upgrade: as you've perceived, it's a desktop system and it's not mission critical, it's a learning thing. > > (Also, top-posting is generally frowned upon on this list; the preferred > method is to respond just below that to which you're responding.) > Sorry, I wasn't intending to top post, I was merely trying to provide a bit of an introduction since I was just quoting snippets of the previous post rather than replying to the whole thing. > > Complete Linux newbie here. Successfully partitioned the disk on my > > W2K box, and got it dual-booting with Woody (installed from a CD > > set). I thought that was pretty cool, and I was going good! Tried > > startx, and got this: (EE) No devices detected. > > > Rather than trying to use an nVidia driver, you might try VESA. Just run > "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" as root and select "vesa" (or, > horrors!, vga) as your video device. > I tried that: the error message changed to "(EE) Screens found, but none have a usable configuration". Leaving aside the grammatical error (should be "none HAS a usable configuration"!), this presumably indicates that I now have a working video driver, but that something else is now wrong! It may however now be irrelevant as I'm going to attempt upgrading as discussed. > > Regarding Sarge, isn't that unstable? What exactly does that mean? > > How exactly would I switch to it? I deliberately chose to install > > Woody, from a set of CD's, because I felt that for a complete dunce > > like me it would be far easier than downloading and installing > > bleeding-edge stuff that I don't understand. > > > Yeah; that's the way to reply to email. > Thanks! See above for apology. > "stable" means that this version of Debian as a whole (not individual > packages) undergoes almost no change; only necessary changes like > security fixes. The current version of stable is named "Woody". > > "testing" means that this version of Debian is being stretched and > pulled and pushed and prodded in preparation for becoming the next > "stable". The current testing is very close to becoming stable. The > current version of testing is named "Sarge". > > "unstable" means that this version of Debian is constantly under flux; > this package being removed; that package being added; another several > packages being merged into one; another package split into several; new > features added to a package; new features breaking a package, etc. > However, the ability of a system to stay usable which has been built > with unstable has no relation whatsoever to the name "unstable". My > desktop workstations all run unstable. My servers run Woody. In my > experience, an "unstable" Debian system is far more stable than a > similarly equipped MS-Windows workstation. All versions of unstable are > named "Sid" (for the kid next door in "Toy Story" that was always > breaking the toys; however, some people think of it unofficially as > Still In Development). > > For maximum usability (all the neat toys) on a workstation, I'd > definitely recommend unstable. If you're a bit more cautious, testing is > satisfactory today, but three months after it moves to stable, testing > will tend to break less often than sid, but will stay broken longer than > does sid. (When something breaks in testing, it might be a couple of > weeks before the fix trickles in; with sid, the fix is usually within > hours or days.) However, after testing goes to stable, you can change > your sources.list file to point to stable, and stick with an unchanging > system untll the next version of stable comes out in a year or seven. > > For a server, woody is still a good choice in many situations, although > I'd probably go with testing, and then switch to stable when testing > moves to stable. > > The advantage of moving to testing or unstable is that you'll get newer > packages that are likely to handle your video system better. As > mentioned, Woody is really ancient now. > OK, thanks, as mentioned above, will attempt to upgrade. > At any rate, there's an open-source driver for nVidia (called nv) in > Debian, which is okay, and there's a proprietary driver for nVidia > (called nvidia, I believe), which must be downloaded and partially > compiled which means you have to have headers and maybe sources and > maybe compile your own kernel, etc etc etc. > Tried nv, doesn't work. The Nvidia FX series doesn't appear in the list of supported cards, so that is presumably the problem. > You also might want to upgrade your kernel. Run "apt-get search > kernel-image-2.6" and/or "apt-get search kernel-image-2.4" to see what > 2.6 and 2.4 kernel images are available in your current distribution > (Woody). Then you can install one with a command like "apt-get install > kernel-image-2.6-686-1". The "686" means its compiled to run on a > Pentium system; a 386 would mean its for the entire 386-class of > machines. A "k7" is for AMD, etc. "SMP" means more than one processor > (not likely for most people - you'd likely know if you have such as > system). > Obviously (I think?) the kernel upgrade is irrelevant if I'm going to attempt to upgrade the whole shooting match. I am indeed clued up enough to know that I don't have an SMP system, but I am too dumb to have spotted before now the potential significance of the fact that I have an Athlon not an x86 processor. Doh! All I can offer in my defence is years of being ins ulated from my hardware by countless layers of Windoze... > -- > Kent > Terrific, Kent, thanks a lot! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
