I tried installing OpenSUSE 11 on an old Thinkpad R40E laptop that I have laying around my work. Everything worked fine for the setup, but when it starts X11, the screen would go black and nothing would work.
The odd thing is that when I boot into failsafe at 800x600, it works perfectly fine, but when I try to change the default resolution back to 1024x768, it goes black again. The Gnome LiveCD also had the same problem where it would go black and freeze the system.
When the screen goes black, it doesn’t usually respond to anything, including button events or killing the X-server. I’ve had to hard-reset the thing 2 or 3 times so far in just the last 30 minutes.
I know that this computer works fine with linux because I was running Ubuntu 8.04 on it before I installed SuSE.
The hardware specs (from Lenovo) are as follows:
Product: ThinkPad R40e 2684-G8U
Original description: Celeron 1.8GHz, 128MB RAM, 20GB HDD, 14.1 XGA(1024x768) TFT LCD, 24x-10x CD-ROM, Modem(CDC), Ethernet(LOM), 6 cell battery, WinXP Pro
SLESD 10 is the one that have been succesfully tested in a R40 TP, although I bet it featured more memory than your system.
Appart from that, 128 Mb of RAM is very low for full desktop in high resolution mode, just as you are trying to use.
The fact that it works when using low resolution modes could be a symptom of that.
Keep in mind also that modern desktops (gnome, kde) needs lots of memory, so, your would do better
using lighter window managers such as IceWM or tvm.
Another source of problems could be that your configured x server does not support high resolution modes.
You can check with more standard ones, like vesa. It won´t take full advantage of your graphic hardware, but it could render more higher resolutions.
Finally, some errors could be preventing the x server to start in high resolution modes. Find the file /var/log/Xorg.*.log for whatever error or warning
generated.
Summarizing, my guess is that the observed behavior is the consequence of having such low amounts of memory.
Anyway, find here some additional suggestions about running Open Suse in machines with such amount of memory: It refers specifically to issues that can arise while installing. Installation with Little Memory - openSUSE
When the black screen first appears does [Ctrl-Alt-Backspace] get a prompt?
If you can get a shell prompt from the black screen, run xorgconfig and reset the X system configuration to match your machine’s peculiarities. That would also work if you can get a shell window under failsafe.
Simply not having been tested does not mean your machine wont work, it just means any peculiarities on your machine have not been noted and adjusted for in the general install set.
After all, we are talking about software, an adaptable system, unlike hardware.
Another route, if xorgconfig is not the corrective, is a visit to the graphic chip maker’s site for a proper SuSE Linux driver.