LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a terminal

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JohnYate

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by JohnYate »

Help may be at hand for you, matt and mariku.

A much more sure fire fix to the problem follows, and it doesn't even involve messing about editing GRUB scripts.
Yes the laptop screenshots say it all, I've seen the terminal made of letter "U"s filling 2/3rds of the screen too !
And yes, following a successful live session with it on my big(-ger) desktop machine, I tried the resolution-setting approach with the current RC LXDE disk on my target machine, the 384 Mb Compaq, but ended up with a terminal again.

So setting the resolution won't always stop the Desktop from crashing.

Never daunted, after shutting down, I started it again, but in addition to the resolution fix, I changed the word "quiet" in the boot command to "verbose" and watched what happened.
Among other things a process called lxdm was being killed shortly before the session degenerated into a terminal session for the user "mint".
Now even I know that lxdm stands for Lightweight Xwindows Desktop Manager, and is probably what we are all wanting to see.
So I typed
lxdm [enter]
but was immediately told that "only root is allowed to use this program".
With not a lot to lose, I of course then said
sudo lxdm [enter]
Nobody gets given the password of the user "mint", so I wasn't even subjected to password formalities.
And the proper LXDE desktop did come up, and I was able to connect to the network and do a complete install, including a creating a revised partitioning scheme, with a bigger swap partition to make up for the small system RAM, and get LXDE onto my machine. The system even offered me the option to split the 39 Gb partition on which "/" had previously been mounted and create a double booting machine, but I'll save that facility for a later date when I might really need it.

Having done all that, I rebooted the machine, and it was OK, and then rebooted the machine again letting the distro disk boot the machine in live mode without doing any screen resolution settings or quiet/verbose switches, and here I am typing this in that live session.

All I had to do to make it work was to type (all in lowercase, of course):
sudo lxdm
when I got to the green and blue mint@mint ~ $ terminal prompt.

This may well work for you also, but it might be wise to set the resolution accordingly if your display can REALLY only manage SVGA (800x600), if only to protect the hardware. Or out of pride if you've got 1080p. I had one long ago (in 199x) that I believe DID get damaged by setting it to 1024 by 768 with a fast-ish refresh rate.
And I don't think lower res. than that is even supported - 640x480 anyone?
Spartan Mindset

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by Spartan Mindset »

JohnYate, I can confirm your newbie-friendly workaround. I just rebooted my LiveCD without making any changes to the boot parameters and after arriving at the all-too-familiar text screen I typed:

sudo lxdm

The desktop then loaded properly. I apologize if my initial solution was either too cryptic or inelegant. My distro of choice is actually aptosid, so the use of "sudo" didn't come naturally to me -- I simply have an interest in LXDE and the Mint team does a real nice implementation . Kudos to you for working the problem to a more satisfactory conclusion. If this doesn't get mariku running I don't know what will. Also, you might want to amend this thread to "Solved" as I'm sure if there are 3 of us there will be more of "us."

Nice work!
JohnYate

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by JohnYate »

Thank you Spartan Mindset, I'm not sure how to go about marking a thread as "solved" - haven't found the button yet.
What we have is only a reasonable user stop-gap; a real solution would involve the developers either finding a way to stop the Desktop crashes, or making the situation following a crash less cryptic.
But I can't believe development work isn't already under way to one of those ends.
JohnYate
Miami592

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by Miami592 »

That's an easy one John Yates.

Go to your original post and hit the "edit" button. You can then add "Solved"

Kudos for your persistance
mariku

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by mariku »

JohnYate, thanks HEAPS!!! You made my day, and quite possibly my week. With my non-experience with Linux, I could not have worked that out in weeks of searching the net.

As far as I can see, it seems to be working just fine for me, exactly as you described, and only took a moment to do.

Thank you also for not just posting the solution, but also describing the way you came to that solution. I think I learned a few first bits about Linux from that, and from questions that your descriptions gave me, which I then researched again myself... as long as I feel that it's useful knowledge that will make me more productive, I'm always hungry to learn more.

I wish I could return the favour or "pay it forward" to someone else who has a question, but at this point in time, if I tried that it would at best be a joke, and at worst cause someone a lot of trouble - so I will refrain from that until some time where I may have learned enough to at least know what I know.

I'm really relieved that I can now move forward into my personal new Linux era, hopefully soon leaving Windows behind.

The future is bright :-)

Cheers,

Matt
Spartan Mindset

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by Spartan Mindset »

Congratulations mariku! I'm glad that second solution pulled you out of No-Man's-Land. Give JohnYate his due, he found the best possible workaround. But bank that newfound (and self-taught) Grub editing knowledge you just acquired. I assure you, if you spend enough time with Linux it'll eventually come in handy. And, judging by the number of views this thread has already received, I can promise you that you've already done a bit of "paying forward" with the hard work you performed over the past couple of days. Here, we are all students and teachers both.

Welcome to the Linux Community!
mariku

Re: LM 12 LXDE Stable installation: No desktop, only a termi

Post by mariku »

Hi all again,

just wanted to thank you again for helping me push through this initial speed bump - IT WAS SO WORTH IT!!!

There is still a whole universe to learn about for me in Linux, of course, but I'm making good progress, and the laptop that I am setting up as my main machine is nearly at a state now where I can entirely forget about switching on the Windows box.

And it feels SO GOOD not to have to do that again! It feels like breaking out of a jail cell and seeing the sky again.

I'll probably keep the other desktop computer purely to play around and experiment with stuff that I'd rather not risk on my day to day tool, the laptop. But windows is out of my life, for good.

Let's say it with James Brown:

(cranks up the volume)

"I feeeeeeeeeeeel goooood! ...."

Cheers,

Matt
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