Display won't work after installing LM9 Fluxbox edition

[pizzadragon]

Hi all!

This is my first post and I'm a complete and total n00b when it comes to linux but i searched like hell and i couldn't figure out how to fix the display issue on my notebook.

I have an old Dell Latitude C640 (Pentium4, 512MB RAM) and after trying Xubuntu, Peppermint 2, and Crunchbang (love crunchbang but i'm only so far familiar a bit with ubuntu and Linux mint 12 on my desktop) so i decided to try Mint 9 Fluxbox so as not to tax the older hardware. The live disk and installation went well after i forced it into vesa graphics mode, but now i've got issues.

It's seems to boot into the OS alright but the display just gives me a black screen and this code:

Code: Select all

(process:263): Glib-WARNING **: getpwuid_r(): failed due to unknown user id (0)
                                        * Exporting directories for NFS kernel daemon...              [ OK ]
* Starting NFS kernel daemon                                                                          [ OK ]
* Starting NTP server ntpd                                                                            [ OK ]
* Starting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd                                                         [ OK ] 

And that's it. I can successfully Ctrl+Alt+F2 into command line mode but I'm not sure what to do once i get there. I figure it's an issue with my graphics driver, which i've had to manually configure in peppermint 2 when i played with that, but i can't figure out what to do. Is there a way to edit the system in command line to force a reboot into vesa mode so i can tinker with it?

It won't recognize an ethernet connection (though it worked fine during install) so i couldn't sudo apt-get install startup-manager.
*UPDATE: After reboot it can connect to network.

Also, I found mention in various forums that the ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 graphics card doesn't have a driver for linux, it's just too old. but then how did i get Ubuntu, Peppermint 2, and Crunchbang to work?

Any other ideas?

[Miami592]

PizzaDragon,

Welcome to the forum.

While I can't give you a workaround for your issue with Mint 9 Fluxbox I can tell you that you should be able to use that hardware with Mint 9 LXDE.

Have you considered that?

M5