[ale] New Distros, X11 Blues

[John Mills]

ALErs -

I'm having trouble with graphics on a new Linux installation. Box is a 
Dell Inspiron 2400 using its built-in Intel graphics. Monitor is Samsung 
LCD 1440x900 ('WXGA').

I tried FC10 and found: (1) default graphic installer dropped into one of 
two modes - clear graphic Fedora splash screen but keyboard and mouse 
dead, or nasty wrapped and overlaid graphics screens that can hardly be 
read, (2) installer ran fine in text mode but X11 won't start - initial 
X11 'gray tile' comes up OK, but screen dies when the window manager kicks 
in - repeated pattern of micro-sized text or graphics (can't tell which) 
with dead keyboard and mouse.

So ... I tried openSuSE-10.3: (1) best results were a clean 1024x(900?) 
presentation roughly in the middle of the screen - but I couldn't expand 
the desktop to 1440x900, (2) full-width low-res display that left my 
monitor in trauma - wouldn't sync cleanly to another box until I 
power-cycled both the monitor and that other box.

Last night I downloaded the openSuSE-11.1 DVD and will try it, but I did 
want to give FC10 a run.

Any suggestions on getting this to work or what may be going wrong?

TIA.

  - Mills