Can't startx (no screens found).


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Hi, I just installed debian linux, and when I tried to "startx", it displayed a bunch of stuff and "no screens found", and something about cannot connect to x server? Any idea how to fix this? I think it's a video card issue.

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It sounds like a video card issue to me too. I've been through this problem myself with Debian stable release 'Woody' . I don't know what video card you have, but I have an ATI Mobility Radeon 7500 and it won't work with the ATI drivers provided in the Debian distro even though it appears it should. I got around it by choosing vesa instead of ATI when I set up my video portion of the installation. I later upgraded to the Debian testing version 'Sarge' and it accepted my ATI selection but created a whole new set of challenges which I won't go into right now. Just try using vesa as your video driver and see if that helps. BTW, when you install Debian you shouldn't have to manually start XFree86, it should automatically do that.

I actualy installed debian today and got the exact same thing no matter what I tryed. I then installed ubuntu, but I have no idea what is going on with this. I haven't tryed to use vesa as the video driver though, I was using the nv driver. It'll be worth a shot next time I decide to switch distro's (I was using FC3 yesterday :D )

as root, type dpkg --reconfigure xserver-xfree86 and choose VESA as your driver, that should work.

After that, download the drivers and reconfigure xfree86 to use them if you need hardware acceleration for games, if you don't, then VESA will work fine.

If you've selected VESA and it still won't work, then repost here or visit irc.freenode.net #debian

I'd first of all reccomend the Debian-Installer 'Sarge' to start on the right track, followed by a simple apt config to set it on 'unstable' so you can then get fetch the latest packages. (I don't know the mirrors by heart, ich bin nicht ein debianer!)

VESA is really the "standard" 2D driver that should work with pretty much almost any video card but it has no acceleration so either install the nvidia drives once in X or you can just do it right away within the console.

$ wget -t0 http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x...0-6629-pkg1.run

$ su

# sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6629-pkg1.run

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