[wellylug] X Server

[Jonathan Harker]

Leo McKEEFRY wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>            Thanks for your interest, I have a Pentium 3 and all I can
> find out on the video card isSiS 630/730 when looking at display
> properties.

You need to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, find the line (in the
"Device" section) that says

   Driver "sis"

and replace it with

   Driver "vesa"

And restart X. This should allow your X server to at least run.

To do this (I'm assuming you've never used Linux before), you will need
to log in with the account and password that you set up during the
install, by pressing

   CTRL ALT F2

or

   ALT F2

This will present you with a (second) text mode login prompt. Log in
with your username and password, and you should get a command prompt. At
this prompt, which will look something like:

   leo at leoscomputer:~$

you will need to type

   sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

(and press ENTER to issue the command). Note the capital X in X11, Linux
filenames are case-sensitive. It will ask you for your password again,
as sudo means "do the following with root privileges" and in Linux, root
is like the Administrator account in Windows, so sudo checks your
password periodically to prevent visitors from hijacking your computer.

Anyway, in the editor that pops up (nano is a simple command-line
editor), scroll down to the Driver line in the "Device" section, and
replace whatever is there (probably "sis" or something) with "vesa".
Quite why Ubuntu or any of the other distros for that matter isn't
clever enough to retry the X server with the fall-back VESA driver is
one of the great mysteries of the universe. Anyway, save and quit by
pressing

   CTRL X

then confirm by pressing Y, then ENTER. Now that you've changed the X
driver, you can restart X by issuing this command at the prompt:

   sudo invoke-rc.d gdm restart

Hope that helps