Black screen problem help a complete noob

Hi, I’ve installed 11.2 KDE on a very old samsung V20 specs here: http://www.laptopshop.co.uk/brouchers/samsungV20.pdf
My problem is that when I boot I get a black screen with just the mouse pointer. I can boot in failsafe fine, but the graphics are horrible.
My question is, is there a workaround or am I flogging a dead horse with this laptop?

This is my first venture into Linux, and I was really keen on leaving windows far behind. I’ve tried quite a few sax2 commands to no avail.

If anyone can help, I’d really appreciate it. I need an idiots guide though as until 2 days ago I’d never used linux before, though I’m willing and eager to learn.

robotcou wrote:
> Hi, I’ve installed 11.2 KDE on a very old samsung V20 specs here:
> http://www.laptopshop.co.uk/brouchers/samsungV20.pdf
> My problem is that when I boot I get a black screen with just the mouse
> pointer. I can boot in failsafe fine, but the graphics are horrible.
> My question is, is there a workaround or am I flogging a dead horse
> with this laptop?
>
> This is my first venture into Linux, and I was really keen on leaving
> windows far behind. I’ve tried quite a few sax2 commands to no avail.
>
> If anyone can help, I’d really appreciate it. I need an idiots guide
> though as until 2 days ago I’d never used linux before, though I’m
> willing and eager to learn.
>
>
well, you didn’t mention how much RAM you have…and, the pdf i had to
download to see what you might have shows four variations of that
laptop with from 128 to 512 MB…even the strongest of those is
pretty puny for 11.2 with KDE, see
http://en.opensuse.org/Download_Help#System_Requirements

this page
http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Laptops/Samsung
lists nothing about a V20 of any strength…

and
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/samsung.html
shows a guy got Ubuntu 5.10 working on the strongest varient, FOUR
years ago

ok, openSUSE 11.2 is FAR advanced compared to the XP that that machine
was probably born with…i mean it is up to the second, bleeding
edge…you probably will have a much more enjoyable experience with
one of the lighter, thinner, less resource hungry distributions…

that is not to say you can’t possibly get openSUSE working if you use
a lighter desktop environment (aka DE) because the KDE you have chosen
while very ‘sexy’ needs a LOT of video RAM (which you do not have)…

my standard list of less needed versions follows…i’ve not actually
run any of these more than a few minutes, but i hear they might do
what you need:

  • SOAD (SuSE On Active Diet), Possibly the most light weight LiveCD
    based on openSUSE 11.1, is a Russian effort using an “Enlightenment”
    windowing environment. Enlightentment is more light weight than KDE,
    Gnome or XFCE. Read/download from here:
    http://sda.scwlab.com/soad_linux.html

  • Puppy Linux. <http://www.puppylinux.org/> Needs 64MB RAM for
    versions before 1.0.2. More recent versions need 128MB RAM and 166MHZ CPU

  • Elive <http://www.elivecd.org/> (has Enlightenment window manager).
    Needs 100MHz CPU and 64MB of RAM for one of the older versions. More
    recent version needs a faster CPU and more RAM

  • DSL (D**N Small Linux).<http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/> needs 16MB
    RAM on a fast 486 CPU. But that will be slow!! Better off with 64 MB
    RAM and a Pentium with 200MHZ CPU

  • Vector Linux. <http://vectorlinux.com/> Needs 32MB RAM and 166MHZ
    CPU. I suspect much more RAM is desirable.

  • AntiX 8.2 <http://antix.mepis.org/index.php/Main_Page> will run in
    128MB. It’s based on MEPIS/Debian.

-SliTaz <http://www.slitaz.org/> When it runs, the 25 MB compressed CD
image expands to about 80 MB, so any computer with 128 MB of RAM will
be able to load it fully into memory, ensuring blazing fast program
execution.

good luck, and welcome to freedom (FREE comes at a price [learning and
frustration]…it is not all laid out and easy…but, neither is a
ring in your nose)


palladium

place this in the kernel boot line of grub vga=0xf06 at startup.

You most likely have something like vga=0x317 this options is causing allot black screens for people with ATI cards. But it looks like you have a intel gpu which I have had very little trouble with in 11.2. Could you post your lspci read out so we can see exactly what graphic’s card you have.

Best of luck

Link to forum thread that is working on black screen issue for ATI