[SOLVED] Periodic Black Screen of Death on new Install of Gnome 2010

[lndwhr]

I have experienced 2 black screens in the middle of a web session (editing in google docs) in the past two days. (Just installed PCLinuxOS 2010 Gnome a few days ago.) I thought everything was fine, then suddenly, nothing.

Yesterday it at least gave me a message. Something to the effect of "Trying to configure Server: Yes/No Exit or something like that.

I love the idea of linux, just can't afford to have that happen, or invest tons of time getting it stable.

Any ideas on things to try to troubleshoot the installation? I have 10 GB / partition, 8 GB /home and 1 GB swap on an old JetBook with 512 K RAM and Windows XP dual boot.

Thanks in advance.

Jim
 

[coffeetime]

>lndwhr,

welcome to the forums. Yep, it can happen. Few month ago a comet fell in Canada Anyway, for the start give us some more info. about your hardware. Did you recently do any updates? Which kernel do you use?

[lndwhr]

CT,

I'm not sure. How do I find out? I used the Gnome ISO from the website. It was burned about a month ago. The only "update" I did after install was try and get a firewall working using the Firewall app in the System Tab. (I forget what it was called.)

[coffeetime]

To update:

open Synaptic


click Reload/Mark All/Apply

To get kernel version:

open Konsole and type:

Code: [Select]

uname -r
enter

and post back. Regarding hardware:

Code: [Select]

lspci -vv


Gnome forums

[menotu]

on an old JetBook with 512 K RAM

512K (probably MB) isn't a great deal of memory to run a full Gnome desktop - what processor does your system have?

I know some people can run with 512MB but it can sometimes be on the limit.

Have you considered one of the "lighter" versions of PCLinuxOS  - maybe lxde? That copes with lower memory systems a lot better.

[lndwhr]

menotu

Thanks, I'll try the lxde flavor. It's an intel pentium 4 processor.

[lndwhr]

FYI all: I used the PCLinuxOS version of lxde (a complete reinstall) and am much happier with my linux environment. (Thanks to menotu!)