[mcfester]

MMMM, Newbies hey! I have tried posting a message but I posted a Poll, how stupid! I now need to repeat myself!
I have purchased Mandrake 10.1 as I wanted Linux as a partition/operating system as well as XP. Installation went fine as well as updates but I was epxecting after the first boot, a grpahic interface similar to XP. I have a command line which I can log in to as per details inputted during installation but I don't know any commands to type in to open a graphic interface similar to windows.
Being a newbie am I expecting too much or have I done soemthing worng?
Any help would be appreitiated? Can;t even spell tonight!

[egorgry]

Login and type gdm, kdm, or xdm if those fail try X or startx. let us know the results so we can get to the root of your problem.

[iamroot]

Type in

startx

You might want to check out your /etc/inittab file to make sure that init is set to 5 and not 3.

[danleff]

Is this a desktop or laptop? Make and model?

When you try typing in startx in the terminal, let us know what error messages that you get (if the GUI does not come up), like "no screens found."

[mcfester]

Great, thanks for all the help so far Guy's, really appreiated.

I teid StartX and other commands and I get the no sceens error. Reading other posts, I treid the xorgconfig command and ran through the options but got stuck on the video card and monitor. I don't think I have a driver for the video card! The commands went in a loop from here and kept returning to the vertical refresh option and by this time I was very confused and gave up.

My PC is home built:
MB:K8N Neo3 Gold Edition
CPU:S754 AMD64 3400+ 2,4GHZ
Ram:1gb Kingston Value RAM
OS:Windows XPPro
HD: Seagate 260gb HD Partioned
Graphics: MSI 6800GT 256mb AGP with Nvida drivers
DVD: Samsung DVD + _ DVD Burner

[egorgry]

Make sure you have the right refresh rate and driver in xorg.config If you can post your config that's even better.

I have that 6800GT and it does work under debian kernel 2.6.8. It works with the vesa driver too if your desperate to get a GUI. Although running that card with teh vesa driver is like a ferari with no engine.

[danleff]

Yes, some systems with newer cards can give fits.

mcfester, BTW, nice system!

As egorgry said, either Mandrake is not detecting the video card correctly, the monitor rates are off, or you missed setting up video during the installation. This is common, as when you get the hardware configure screen during the install, making sure that you configure the video is easily missed. At the summary screen, if you noticed, you may have seen that the video was marked as not configured yet.

Look at the specifications for your monitor. When you set up xorg, you may need to manually specify the horizontal and vertical rates.

If this fails, you may have to revert to vesa to get the GUI up. Then you can tackle more specific settings for your video card later.