getting a little frustrated...need some help

[seanl]

I bought a Dell PC

Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 630 w/HT Technology (3.0GHz,800FSB),
Memory 2GB Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM at 400MHz (4x512M) 2GB4
Keyboard Dell USB Keyboard
Monitor 19 inch digital Flat Panel display
Video Card 256MB PCI Express™ x16 (DVI/VGA/TV-out) ATI Radeon X600 SE HyperMemory
Hard Drive 160GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM) w/DataBurst Cache™
Floppy Drive and Media Reader 13 in 1 Media Card Reader
Mouse Dell® 2-button USB mouse
Network Card Integrated Intel® PRO 10/100 Ethernet
Modem 56K PCI Data Fax Modem DFAX
CD ROM/DVD ROM Dual Drives: 16x DVD-ROM Drive + 16x DVD+/-RW w/dbl layer write capability DV16DVR
Sound Card Sound Blaster® Live! 24-bit ADVANCED HD™ Audio


So far, I've tried to install Mandriva 2005 LE, Mandriva 2006, Red Hat Enterprise (Fedora core 4), Ubuntu, Debian Sarge and Knoppix and Suse9.1. Knoppix will work fine booting off of the DVD. As soon as I try to run any of these OS's off my HDD my screen turns black apon boot-up (Except knoppix...see below).
Right now I can boot Suse in failsafe mode but staring at the command prompt gets kinda boring real fast. Obviously something is wrong with my monitor configuration. After all the text zips by...it seems to go immediately to "power-save" mode.... the green light on the on/ off button turns to yellow if I boot Suse or any other distro off of the HDD.

Is there any commands I can give at the prompt (while booting in text mode) that would straighten this mess out?

I have been able to install knoppix 4.0 on my HDD and run it ok... but GAWD, that Debian looks like crapola and it appears to only like running at low res.

Am I stuck with a nasty looking Debian release ?...or can I hopefully get Suse, Xandros or Red Hat Enterprise to ever live peacefully with my monitor?

any tips or tricks?

[puntmuts]

I found a HOWTO on the Susewiki site. You'll need to install the kernel sources as well as some programs to compile (gcc etc ...). You can do that on the console using yast.

After that (or if you already have these installed) download the ati binary driver from the ati site. The page takes care of reconfiguration of your X as well:

http://www.susewiki.org/index.php?ti...r_Installation

[seanl]

Thank you...this should keep me occupied for awhile..

[scpeckham]

I use Debian, and ran into a simular problem (I am a newbie too), and found that
I had to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 (make a copy (use cp command) first ... just in case).
There is a monitor section make sure the
HorizSync
VertRefresh
match your monitor, also make sure
Option "DPMS"
is in there.
Unfortunately the ed command is less than obvious to use, so do a
man ed
first to find out about it. I usually just edit one line at a time
2,12n will display lines 2 through 12
5c will let you overlay (change) line 5 when you want out of change mode,
use a line containing only a period .
1,$w writes the datset back out ($ means last line in file)
q quits

good luck...

[psic]

Just to add to what Speckham wrote, I think Suse uses Xorg instead of XFree86, which means you don't have the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file, in it's place is /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but everything else is exactly the same.

Also, you will have to be root to edit it.