It often happens that the installer on the Kubuntu Live CD is unable to correctly identify and configure automatically the X server configuration for your graphics display chip or card. For the noob, this means the first thing you see after you run the installation routine is a jet black screen with (or without) a blinking white "_" in the upper left corner. The keyboard and mouse are apparently unresponsive. Here is what to do:
1. Alt-F1 usually takes you to the Command Line Interface (CLI), aka "text prompt" -- sometimes it requires Ctrl-Alt-F1.
2. At the text prompt, just enter your user name, hit Enter, and then enter the password that you gave yourself when you went through the installation routine.
3. Congratulations! You are now logged in to a marvelous and powerful Linux system, but oops, you're lacking a GUI interface. We'll fix that now. Enter the following command in a Konsole window, exactly as shown (if you had a GUI, you could just "copy" it with your mouse, then in the console window right-click on the cursor and paste it in):
This starts the X server configuration script. On the first screen, answer "NO" to the autodetect question (because we already know what happens when it tries ....), and on the second screen choose "VESA" as your display type. Then you can accept the defaults until you get to the "monitor" section. On that screen, put an "x" only in one resolution that you can comfortably use, like 1024 x 768, or if it is a small display maybe 800 x 600. Then enter refresh rates appropriate for your LCD or CRT monitor. When completed, it will dump you back to the text prompt. At that point you can enter
and you should get a reasonable GUI, in which to continue your excellent adventure.
4. Now you can use the Adept Manager to install Firefox, if you wish, and any other packages that you are in urgent need of.
5. When you are ready to exploit the potential of your actual graphics chip or card, you can open the KMenu>System>Konsole and enter
and the listing will show your hardware, including the specific graphic display hardware. We will need to know this to help you identify the best driver available, and the process to acquire and install it. Then you can make a post to request assistance, stating your motherboard or computer model, CPU, and graphics hardware.
For example here is a reasonable approach if you have an Nvidia or ATI graphics system.
1. Alt-F1 usually takes you to the Command Line Interface (CLI), aka "text prompt" -- sometimes it requires Ctrl-Alt-F1.
2. At the text prompt, just enter your user name, hit Enter, and then enter the password that you gave yourself when you went through the installation routine.
3. Congratulations! You are now logged in to a marvelous and powerful Linux system, but oops, you're lacking a GUI interface. We'll fix that now. Enter the following command in a Konsole window, exactly as shown (if you had a GUI, you could just "copy" it with your mouse, then in the console window right-click on the cursor and paste it in):
Code:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
Code:
startx
4. Now you can use the Adept Manager to install Firefox, if you wish, and any other packages that you are in urgent need of.
5. When you are ready to exploit the potential of your actual graphics chip or card, you can open the KMenu>System>Konsole and enter
Code:
lspci
For example here is a reasonable approach if you have an Nvidia or ATI graphics system.
Comment