Re: [LUG] Debian stable desktop not so stable

[Mark Evans <mpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Simon Waters wrote:
> When I hit "ctrl-alt-F1" to get a text screen, sometimes the desktop
> (KDE) takes a nose dive on my new PC.

What is the video card, what resolution is it running at? Both in
X and in text mode...

> This is obviously very frustrating, both because I lose KDE, and second
> when KDE restarts it drags me back to the GUI login.
>
> A handful of errors in .xsession-errors (not very useful errors) is all
> I've found so far.
>
> I may whip it up to unstable - as stable seems rather "old" having been
> at unstable oin the laptop for ages......

Both unstable and testing load the frame buffer device by default.
You could try putting "vga16fb" in your /etc/modules.

> But has anyone seen this, and more importantly what is the best term to
> google for regarding switching to a text only console? As I dare say
> others have seen it before, but getting away from other Xfree86 problems
> is proving fun.

I've seen this and the X server randomly dieing a few times. The 
solution I used was to use a different video card. Not really an option
with a laptop. If it uses shared memory you could try adjusting the
memory size in the BIOS.

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