11.1 doesn't install on Dell Dimension 2400

I reported this for OS 11, and 11.1 still won’t install on my Dell Dimension 2400 with nVidia 6200 card (GeForce 4000).

The CD boots, many messages scroll by, then the screen goes blank with an unblinking cursor. The PC doesn’t accept keystrokes (Ctrl-Alt-Delete, etc.), so a cold reboot is necessary. The install goes fine on my Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop, so it isn’t just that I’m holding my mouth wrong during the desktop install.

I also had a failure attempting to install opensuse 11.1 on a Dell Dimension 2400. Mine has an on-board Intel Graphics Adapter. I upgraded the BIOS to ver A05, which hopefully does not cause a problem. I am currently using a different distro Linux Mint 5 community KDE edition, which handles the on board graphics quite well. I had dabbled with earlier pre-open suse since about 7.1 and I like it as a serious software development and as an office workstation. And it is reassuring to know that there is an enterprise edition as well. However, I became a Mac OS X switcher about 5+ years ago. And Linux Mint 5 is very decent for multimedia applications with built in support for “controversial” codecs. I might try to revert to using opensuse 11.0 with KDE 3.5 desktop; just in case some kernel “improvement” has an adverse side effect on the Dell Dimension 2400 with built-in Intel on board graphics. Also, I maxed out the RAM on this box to the maximun allowed: 2 GB. BTW, I can’t event boot the Win XP HOME CD that came from DELL. I tried to google my problem and got side-tracked on this opensuse support site.

I had this same problem with the Intel card on the Dimension 2400. Apparently, the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file needs some work. I had to add this line under Section “Device”:

Option “ExaNoComposite” “true”

OR you can add this option:

Option “NoAccel”

after which the performance stinks, but at least it works. It seems quite a bit slower than the 10.3 release. I’m shopping for another video card at this point just to get a little better performance.

I was able to boot into “failsafe” mode and then log in, where it switches the graphics to 8-bit mode. Then I edited the files. You can select NoAccel from the front end under System->Hardware->Graphics Card and Monitor if you don’t want to hand-edit the config file.

It would be nice if acceleration could be turned on for the card I have.

HL

I used your suggestion for the options but I found one that was much better in terms of speed:

Option “DRI” “false”

Everything is working pretty decent now. I hope this helps.