Ok, first of all you don't come into a debian mailing list and start flaming Debian for not being like RedHat. That is exactly the kind of behaviour that will make sure you get 99 flame replies and 3 flame+little help (like this one) replies to your question. You think Debian sucks, don't use it. Go back to Redhat, no-one wants to help you switch if you have that attitude. If you feel like co-operating nicely, there are gazillions of helpful debian-users out there who will make sure it works if it can. Ok that was the light flame part. Now for some *attempted* support.I installed a woody base system and then install the xserver-svga required by my nVidia GeForce3 card and a window manager. Then from a root command line I ran startx. However, all I got as a result was a black screen with speckles (not x's grey screen), with a set of blinking underlines. My guess is I was looking at a brief paragraph or sentence followed by a cursor, that recycled and lacked a proper horizontal sync.
I took a look at the /ect/X11/XF86Config file, and to my eyes it was very strange. In part perhaps because I'm familiar with the RedHat file, but there were suspicious aspects.
My current configuration has a vertRefresh of 48-120 Hz, but the
debian file ends up with 50-85Hz. I used "medium" level configuration,
which asked me for the "best" performance of my card. I entered
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (my card is capable of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hz), which was
closest. And so why did the configuration reduce the horizontal
refresh so drastically?
Other oddities. Nowhere in the device section or elsewhere does the
configuration see my nVidia card and what should be its its nv
driver. Instead, the graphic card's name is generic and the driver is
simply VGA2. I assumed that the nv driver was compiled in the stock
2.4.18-bf2.4 kernel. Am I wrong? How would I know?
In the monitor section, there are three dozen commented lines describing all possible resolutions and refresh rates, and associated with each is an uncommented line with a "ModeLine" statement. Is this enormous mess normal in debian?
Did I fail to install a needed package? Shouldn't my video card have
been detected? Should I expect the debian xserver configuration to be
close enough to the RedHat so that I can use one to some extent as a
model for changing the other?
You might want to try using the xserver called "xserver-xfree86" instead . AFAIK, the xserver-svga stuff uses XFree version 3.x, which I think will not have support for you GeForce. You will probably have better luck with the driver in XFree 4.x which is used by xserver-xfree86.
Once you get done with that, try using the utility called 'dexconf'. In my brief experience with it, what it does is use the vesa driver and somehow manages to get a basic X display up (no acceleration and that stuff). Then you can try experimenting and making new configurations with either "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" or "xf86config" or "xf86cfg".
Nvidia has their own proprietary drivers if you want to get decent 3D performance. That is probably best left for another posting after you get X working :)
Patience will get you replies from the higher gods on the debian-user mailing list. :)
Peace, Hope you find Debian a nice place, -- Harshwardhan Nagaonkar Electrical Engineering Sysop Brigham Young University, UT-84602
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