How do you install X.org (X11R6.7.0) via CD and command ln?

[bquark]

I said it would hard. Look for a more up to date debian package. You could start a new thread on linuxforums.org or you could go to the Debian website.

[bquark]

I did a little googling and I found backports.org. They provide newer software
for debian stable. It looks like they have XFree86 4.2.1. It is not as new as what you are trying to compile but it may solve your problems.

[Lotharjade]

Im just a bit grumpy, sorry.

I just don't understand why it is so out of date. I got what they said was the current stable release from the debian site. I know it wouldn't be the most up to date, but everyone seems to indicate it is just about stonehengeish.

When I installed, I installed Vanilla. Would one of the other "flavors" be better?

[bquark]

Debian 3.0 was released almost two years ago. Debian is very slow to release. They have an extremely large distribution and it takes time to pull it all together. They claim to be perfectionists so I am surprised that you are having problems with X, but it may be something about your hardware. The X configuration in debian is not as polished as some other distros.

If you want more cutting edge software use Mandrake, SUSE or Fedora. Slackware tends to stay close to current while still being very stable. For example, Slackware 10 plans to have a 2.4 kernel standard with a 2.6 kernel optional. Fedora Core 2 has already gone to 2.6.

I used Debian on the desktop back in 1997-98, but I switched to Mandrake when I wanted recent releases of KDE. I now use Fedora. Linux is not monolithic. The are real difference between the distributions.

One of the reasons I switched to Redhat/Fedora was that when Mandrake 9 came out I could not get it to install even though 7.0, 7.2 and 8.0 worked fine. I tried Redhat 9.0 instead and it worked fine. I had everything working great in an hour. I had been very happy with Mandrake, but the switch to Fedora has not bothered me. Don't torture yourself trying to force Debian to work for you.

If you do not have broadband, there are various places to get cheap CD' s of the distributions such as cheapbytes.com and linuxcd.org.

[Lotharjade]

I would like to thank both you bquark, dswain, and the others who have helped me narrow my problems down. In discussions it was found that it seemed my xserver and some other things were old. I had installed "Vanilla" and hadn't known that it installed the 2.2 kernel instead of the 2.4. I then reinstalled 2.4 with the knoledge that I had learned and kept fiddling with the settings in "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" and finally got things to work. It looks like I had to set it so that it sent info directly to the video card instead of going to some sort of switcher. I am now fine tuning things.

I must say, I had become really frustrated and discouraged, but I just took a break and kept coming back and attacking things using your advice. I send KUDOS because I cant send cookies or a pie. Thank you.