Any Ubuntu heads out there able to help?
Sounds to me like there’s a problem with the driver for your Graphics adapter…Does your computer have ‘onboard’ graphics? if so which chipset? Also if you have a proper graphics card which make is it? If it’s ATI then they are very poorly supported as far as I know…
I can probably help if you have an nVidia card as this happens to me every time I install my ‘distro’ (SuSE),,,
Whenever I install Linux with my graphics card I get a weird fuzzy blue screen…What I do is:
A:) Press ctrl+alt+F1 to switch to the text mode console
B:) Log in as root and switch to runlevel 3 (this stops the graphical interface) by typing ‘init 3‘
(you might need to tap return to get your prompt back)
C:)Then I get the nVidia drivers…you can do this by downloading them on another computer and putting them on disk, or using a command like ‘wget‘ to download them directly from the nVidia website…
D:)Once the nVidia executable is on my drive I simply run it…I need to have the Kernel source code installed so that the installer can build the drivers, but I understand that this is not always the case….If you dont have the Kernel source installed you will need to install it now…
E:) Finally stick the system back into full graphical mode by typing ‘init 5‘ And your graphics should be working fine…
Like I said before Linux is definately not without it’s issues in terms of hardware support (add ATi cards to my list!)…Other problems arise when trying to help another user who uses a different ‘distro’. Quite often each distro takes a radically different approach to building up a working system, so my year or so of solidly using SuSE for my everyday computing may be worthless when it comes to helping an ‘Ubuntu’ or ‘Debian’ or ‘Fedora Core’ user
It’s not just the filesystem layouts that vary between distros, but also the package management systems…SuSE and Fedora use .RPM files; Debian and Ubuntu use .DEB files…Both systems can seem very very confusing to new users who have been pampered by the simple ‘double click on installer.exe’ type software installation found on WIndows…
Remember that ‘Linux’ itself is just the ‘kernel’ – the foundation that the rest of these very disparate systems sit precariously on top of…It’s certainly not a fully working operating system in itself. That’s why I’d recommend using a Live CD for your chosen distro (heck, try a few!) before making the install, then maybe you can figure out the learning curve on potential sticking points, like getting on the net and problems with your graphics….
As for x86 vs. x86_64 – I’ve ran the 64 bit version of SuSE for about 8 months now, and it’s caused way more problems that it’s solved…The only reason that I haven’t switched back to 32 bit is because I’ve got the 64 bit install CD’s lying around and I’m always too lazy to download the 32 bit ones again… 😉
