Hmm, two thoughts.

First of all, you say you didn't find your type of card when you were going through xorgconfig and that you had to specify the values yourself. Would you mind telling me which TYPE of card you selected? I always choose the first one from the list ("vesa", "vesa generic" or something like that); this installs a generic driver after which I complete the rest of the configuration; then I restart X and all I have to do is go to ATI and download and install the proper driver. My experience is: if I select any other driver from the list (= 20+ items), I get a blank screen too (kind of confusing, ATI is one of the items on the list but I do have to avoid it - it seems to cover only older/other ATI cards). I guess, if you select nvidia from that list, you're facing a similar issue.

Second thought: I see you are still using Suse 10.0; Linux is your typical works in progress and things can improve tremendously from one release to the next. I built myself a brand new system last Summer and it was an absolute nightmare to install any distribution at all; now, with a few minor exceptions, they install as well as on any older system. For what it's worth, I have indications that 10.1 does support your card:

http://en.opensuse.org/HCL/Desktops/Shuttle

Then again, I don't have the best memories of Suse 10.1 as it took about a dozen of attempts for the DVD to install without throwing some kind of exception/error. But maybe that's just because it had trouble with my brand new hardware. 10.2, however, works great. Or you could go for a different distribution (I can imagine all of this gets pretty tiring in the end). I'm using Debian, Mandriva, Sabayon, Fedora, Ubuntu and PCLinuxOS in addition to Suse and it really doesn't make all that much of difference. Suse may (and does) generally look better out of the box but any Linux can be tweaked to look/behave pretty much as you like.

Thanks again guys.
And well, when I was running xorgconfig, I tried with both options. First, I selected i810 model, and specified the amount of memory as 128 MB (converted into Kb as asked by the xorgconfig interface.). When I did this and finished, my display disappeared and the system refused to boot into runlevel 5; and there were no error messages whatsoever.
Next, I tried the same thing and filled in the values manually. And yet, the same thing happened. The system didn't budge even after n reboots and finally I had to restore the backup of xorg.conf.
And I don't know if my entire display system has been cocked up by suse, but I've also noticed one more thing: everytime I boot into GNOME, my system fails on powermanagement counts. Last night, my monitor wasn't switched off by the system for 3 hours, and I found that when I woke up. I tried hunting for options everywhere, but couldn't get much far. I could not find a power management page that could allow me to set the idle time after which a monitor should be switched off on its own. Any ideas about that?
And I did go through all of the links you had specified, and read through all of them. I still don't know whats the problem...
I'll also try running xorgconfig again and let you all know.
Also note that I checked in the xorg.conf file, and found that the monitor V/H rates are correct. And now, I'm sure that the problem is what Suse sees my graphics adapter as. It thinks that my card is not capable of anything more than 1280x1024@60, and it wouldn't even let me run 1152x864@75 (which windows has no problems with).

*shrug*

Hehehe... I shouldn't say this, but it's getting me pretty worked up now.
I finally got the xscreensaver to run in gnome (automatically when a user logs in, by making an entry in the .xinitrc file.), and now my system seems to go in cycles: Screen blanks out-screensaver-monitor off-monitor on(blank)-monitor off-screensaver, and so on...
The powersave thing works well in KDE, but I seriously don't know whats the problem with GNOME. Any ideas about that?

In short:

That's something I've never seen before. Have you tried selecting a different screensaver? I think Gnome has its own set. I'm curious whether that will make any difference.

And maybe something is wrong with your xinitrc; KDE and Gnome are different WMs so they may respond completely differently.

Here is something that used to be helpful but I'm not sure (so beware) whether this will work for you:

Xorg > /tmp/x.out 2>&1
Ctrl alt backspace
vi /tmp/x.out

This will produce a survey of all the X settings, both the ones you supplied yourself and those that were set by the system. Checking for any warning/error messages may help pinpoint the root of the problem.

In the end, it's really beginning to look as if Suse 10.0 doesn't like your hardware. People pick their Linux but Suse apparently picks its people. I understand you're determined to make it work at last after all the trouble you have gone to, I'm just like you when it come to that, but maybe it's getting time you tried a different distro. If you have the space on your system, you can install one in addition to your Suse; that way can go from one to the other and figure out just what is wrong.

I'm sincerely beginning to dislike suse... hehehe...
And well, I tried a lot last night, and it seems like a change of hardware seems to be the only option left for me. Here's the story:

Story I:

First, I tried to fix the xscreensaver problem. I've added stuff to my .xinitrc file (/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc) and here's what it looks like:
#!/bin/bash
xscreensaver -no-splash &
#
#
# Sample .xinitrc for SuSE Linux
# This script is called from 'startx' when you start an X session
#

#
# In case everything goes wrong, we at least fall back to a plain xterm
#
failsafe="xterm -ls -T Failsafe -geometry 80x24-0-0"
trap "exec $failsafe" EXIT SIGHUP SIGINT SIGPIPE SIGTERM SIGIO

#
# Some bash (1 and 2) settings to avoid trouble on a
# failed program call.
#
test -n "$BASH" && set +o posix
no_exit_on_failed_exec=1
type shopt > /dev/null 2>&1 && shopt -s execfail
set +e > /dev/null 2>&1

#
# This should be the default
#
export TERM=xterm

#
# choose a window manager
#
if test -n "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=`type -p $WINDOWMANAGER`
fi
if test -z "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
if test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/kde ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/kde
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/startkde ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/startkde
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2 ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/fvwm2
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/wmlist ; then
for i in `/usr/X11R6/bin/wmlist` ; do
WINDOWMANAGER=`type -p $i`
test -n "$WINDOWMANAGER" && break
done
elif test -x /usr/X11R6/bin/twm ; then
WINDOWMANAGER=/usr/X11R6/bin/twm
fi
fi

if test -z "$WINDOWMANAGER" ; then
echo "Error: Unable to find a window manager. Please make sure you installed one!"
echo "Exiting..."
xmessage -timeout 10 -default okay -center -file - <<-EOF
Error: Unable to find a window manager. Please make sure you installed one!
Exiting...
EOF
exit 1
fi

# add dbus-launch if found
dbuslaunch="`which dbus-launch 2>/dev/null`"
if [ -n "$dbuslaunch" ] && [ -x "$dbuslaunch" ]; then
WINDOWMANAGER="$dbuslaunch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session $WINDOWMANAGER"
fi

#
# Load system and users resources if not already done
# (XSESSION_IS_UP set by xdm in $XLIBDIR/xdm/Xsession)
#
if test "$XSESSION_IS_UP" != "yes" ; then
XLIBDIR=/usr/X11R6/lib/X11
test -r $XLIBDIR/Xmodmap && xmodmap $XLIBDIR/Xmodmap
test -r $HOME/.Xmodmap && xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
test -r $XLIBDIR/Xresources && xrdb -load -retain $XLIBDIR/Xresources
test -r $HOME/.Xdefaults && xrdb -I$HOME -merge $HOME/.Xdefaults
test -r $HOME/.Xresources && xrdb -I$HOME -merge $HOME/.Xresources
fi

# Start the XIM server
XIMFILE=/etc/X11/xim
test -r $HOME/.xim && XIMFILE=$HOME/.xim
test -r $XIMFILE && source $XIMFILE

# Enable Numlock if set
test -r /var/run/numlock-on -a -x /usr/X11R6/bin/numlock && /usr/X11R6/bin/numlock

# Disable new Xcursor themes if none is specified resp. located in $HOME
# (use "unset XCURSOR_CORE" to enable them again later)
#if [ "x$XCURSOR_THEME" == "x" -a ! -d $HOME/.icons ]; then
# export XCURSOR_CORE=true
#else
# unset XCURSOR_CORE
#fi

# load nvidia settings
if [ -x /usr/bin/nvidia-settings -a -r $HOME/.nvidia-settings-rc ]; then
/usr/bin/nvidia-settings --load-config-only &> /dev/null &
fi

echo "$WINDOWMANAGER" | grep -q twm && xsetroot -solid darkslateblue

#
# Uncomment next line to activate asking for ssh passphrase
#
# ssh-add

#
# Add your own lines here...
#


# day planer deamon
# pland &

#
# finally start the window manager
#
exec $WINDOWMANAGER

# call failsafe
exit 0
(Note the underlined part.)
But it seems like Suse has a mind of its own. I've set the following values under the Advanced>Power Management --> Standby after: 7 minutes; Suspend after: 13 minutes, and Power off after: 13 minutes. I once left my system idle, and started measuring things with a stopwatch (think of how worked up I am), and like I said before, it seems like suse has a mind of its own.
All of a sudden, the screen blanked out after 1 minute 15 seconds. Strange. I waited. And then the monitor got turned off after 7 minutes 39 seconds. Even more strange. And before I knew it, the monitor was back up again, running a blank screen. Since I care about my monitor, I switched back to KDE, and things worked well. Sheeesh.

Story II:

I finally wanted to give FC 6 a try. So, I went to one of my friend's place, who happens to have 'exactly' the same system configuration as mine. He was about to install FC 6 on his machine, and I wanted to see how things go.
To start with, the installation was smooth and easy, and took much less time to complete (even after we'd selected all packages.) And when it did complete, it was disappointment all the way.
Firstly, there was the only sessiontype we had was Gnome. No KDE. And next, since I was really interested in DNS servers, I started looking for named/bind in services, and nothing. We later found out that we'd have to download and install a 22 MB package before we could use bind.
Then, we configured his DSL connection on the machine (enabling the option that made it the default connection for the machine, and also enabling it at the time of boot.)
, and much to our dismay, we found out that after every reboot, the system failed to initialize it as the default route, and we could not load sites in the beginning! The device had to be deactivated and then activated again before we would be able to work on the internet on his system. Sheesh again.
And he had the same display crap. The system would not let him select anything more than 1280x1024@60, leave apart 1152x864@75.

So, thats the story guys. I've ruled out FC 6 as a future installation on my machine. Any advice as to what should I install? What do you think is the best distro at present?

(Thanks a lot to all of you. I'm very sorry about the long and boring post.)

(Correction: Power off after 15 minutes)

hello ashesh0326,
To be honest it looks like your problems are spinning out of control(just my opinion) with suse 10..
I run a desktop with a hard drive plug in rack with many drives..I have windowsXp dual boot with suse 10.2 on it,another with Suse 10.2,another with suse 10.0,yet another with Kubuntu 6.1 and Fedora Fc5 as well as Mandriva 2007 free..Not to mention the live cd versions..Yes I love Linux,hehe Out of all the above the Mandriva seemed to install with the least trouble on my particular system..That will vary with your hardware and likes and dislikes too..
Others may disagree but heres my impression for the following:

Suse:Pros...Very complete distro with lots of packages
Cons: Been somewhat difficult to install trouble free on my computer..Slow compared to others in booting and
very slow in upgrading patches etc..
Kubuntu: Pros installed easily,but found it somewhat different from the others (user/root way of doing things)..Killer update system..Very very quick..
Cons: I guess just my unfamiliar way to do things in it..

Mandriva: Pros: Installed easily and it found all my hardware first time..Nice assortment of packages too..Upgrade with urpmi worked well too..

This is not to start a flame war but just my observations for what it,s worth.
Finally, ashes,you deserve a lot of credit for persistance
and it's clear you really enjoy Linux..Even if you do not eventually solve it I think you learned much,I know I did from the fine posters in this thread..Have Fun
jolphil

Hi,

Sorry to hear Fedora wasn't much of an improvement. I'd just like to point out that you may have missed quite a few packages: my dvd does allow me to install Gnome, XFCE or KDE (or all three at once if I want to). So why not you? You should 've chosen "customize now" right after setting up the system clock if you wanted to add to the default install. I'm quite confident the bind packages were there too.

Still, that wouldn't have solved the display issue. I'm afraid all of this is due to hardware limitations. I would be tempted to single out the video card but then I find it's supposed to support up to 2048x1536 And I have indications that it is possible to run your monitor at higher resolutions too; you may want to compare your xorg.conf with what you can find here (I guess you most be sick and tired off all that xorg stuff by now):
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-L...5-10/2794.html

In the end, if neither Suse nor Fedora does the trick, I'm afraid that you'll have a hard time finding a distribution that does offer what you're looking for. Let's not forget that below the surface, all distributions are quite alike and xorg is something that unites them all (possibly with the exception of Slackware). As a huge Debian fan, I would recommend Etch as a valid alternative; but that one uses xorg just as nearly all the rest so I really don't know.

Well, thank you so much guys, I really really appreciate all the help and time you have given.
And yes, I kept thinking of something that I had seen during the install, and yes, it was the customize now option. So, right after I had posted my last entry here, I suddenly made up my mind to give Fedora Core a try. I started the install, and hit customize now, and tadaa!! The options were there. I selected all that I needed and proceeded. The install went fine, and much faster than it did in Suse's case.
Once done, I first got rid of the 1280x1024@60 screen (trust me, it really hurts your eyes), and went for a decent 1024x768 screen.
Configuring the system was a breeze too. I had no problems when it came to setting up my ethernet and dsl connection.
Another interesting point was, this time, my system does give me a 1152x864@75 option, under System>Administration>Display, but its a different story that the system does not ever accept it.
Other than that, I'm quite happy with FC now. It somehow gives me a more open source feel, and its definitely faster, so good enough. I think I'm going to give FC a try before jumping into anything new now (though I'm aching to try Etch now that you've told me...)
And definitely, linux is one of my huge interests, and lets see if I can manage to get things working my way before I get new hardware. I really hope I do.
And yes, FC does come with some bugs. I had to go for a double install in this case, as after the first installation, FC jumped into 1024x768@60 (YES!! 60Hz!! I checked with the monitor), and even that is an eye sore. After reinstall, things worked fine.
As far as Suse goes, I don't know. Suse is something people keep falling back to, and maybe I will to. But the only reason why I've installed linux is because I've wanted to learn more about computers and how things work at the basic level. And I think Suse keeps you from doing that. It's highly GUI based, and my experience with the whole sax thing has made all that pretty clear now.
So, maybe Gentoo is next for me, but it's also scary, as people tell me that a lot of customization goes into setting up a Gentoo based PC. And since I need a working system 24/7/365, I really doubt myself. Hehehe... But I love trying new distros.

Anyways, thanks a lot guys. You've really helped me gain a lot of insight about the xorg.conf (jay73: I'll give what you've written a try though, and will let you know asap) thing, and it's really good to see both of you being so willing to help me.
I do wonder if there is some other way to keep in touch with you all. If there is, please feel free to let me know, and please ignore this if you're not willing to.

Thanks again!

Period.

Ash

Before I had a few extra systems, I had to keep my PC able to run at any moment too. A lot of people will tell you to dual boot, but sometimes things go haywire and eat the other os too. My solution was to buy a couple of removable drive drawers (with hard drives). Changing OSs then meant: shutdown, turn key, pull out one drive, put in the next, turn key, boot next os. This makes certain that the worst you will have to do is shut the machine down and reboot(to get a running machine). The drawers are usually only $15 each and for testing purposes you can run any hard drive you have laying around. At one point I had drives for win 3.11,95,98,XP and OS/2. It makes it a lot easier to trouble shoot(over the phone to relatives) an os if you have it booted in front of you.

For FC specific problems you may have better luck over at fedoraforum.org.

Lazlow,
Thanks for the advice man, and I certainly I agree with you on that. I completely understand the risk of losing the other OS while installing linux. In fact, when I first installed linux, I did it with FC 2, and trust me, the installation was itself challenging. First, you have to get used to completely different terminology, and second, you have to be extremely careful when formatting hard drives is concerned. One mistake and whoom! It's all over for the other OS. I do agree with you.
I have been thinking of the alternative you told me too, and well, maybe I am going to invest in it pretty soon. It seems like a workable and risk free operation to me, and I've been thinking of buying some new hard drives.
Lets see. Thanks for the words though. I appreciate your help!

By and by, any of you guys know how to set up and activate power management in GNOME on an FC 6 machine?
The powermanagement thing works well in KDE, but not in GNOME. I tried the xscreensaver thing too, but my system doesn't recognize the command, and it seems like it's not been installed.
Any ideas about that?

Hi, ashesh.
I'm sorry it has been so long since I have responded. I was made a moderator on another Linux site and it's taken up all my time learning the job.

But what I have to say now is bad news. The Intel driver for the 945 chip uses the Video BIOS to set video modes. Only the preset modes allowed by the BIOS are going to work. This probably what you are hitting up against.

See
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archive...st/009197.html

I don't know if this will help or not, but you should look at it:
http://en.opensuse.org/Patch_the_Video_BIOS
and Intel's page on Linux support for the chip:
http://support.intel.com/support/gra.../CS-010512.htm

Sorry if that is the way it works out. I wish I had better news for you.

BTW, if you are interested in trying a different Linux distro, Simply MEPIS 6.5 will be in Final Release in a week or less. Here is the Release Candidate 3 statement:
http://www.mepis.org/node/13211
. . .and here's where you can find me if I'm not around here:
http://www.mepislovers.org/

--SilverBear

I think this is what you have in mind:

http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-power-manager/

Have you got HAL installed?

And if you want a screensaver, it should be as simple as going to System/Preferences(or was it Administration?)/Screensaver; although I think a screensaver is enabled by default (it was on my system but I may have made a different selection).

And here are two online tutorials that I found immensely helpful in first setting up and configuring FC5 (and more recently FC6); the first one is by Stanton Finley, who made quite a reputation by writing these how-tos; unfortunately (for Fedora fans, that is), he decided some time ago he likes Ubuntu better so there has been no follow-up for FC6 - but most of it is still perfectly valid. The second one addresses FC6, it largely repeats Stanton Finley but it's got some very interesting information of its own.
http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_cor...ion_notes.html
http://www.mjmwired.net/resources/mjm-fedora-fc6.html

And if that's still not enough, you can look around for one book I keep recommending to everyone who is new to Fedora (especially if they take a special interest in the server aspect):
Christopher Negus - Fedora 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 Bible
Not available for FC6 but last time I checked there was a new edition cooking for Fedora 7 ; although that may still be a while in the making because Fedora 7 shouldn't see its official release until late May/early June (although you can already download release candidates).

Well, thank you so much for the information SilverBear, I appreciate your help.
But, then, the BIOS presets you've talked about here, refer to the allowed resolutions as programmed in the BIOS, right? I gave it a thought, and I remembered that I had gone through intel's website, and found that my card was capable of a lot more (please refer to: http://www.intel.com/design/graphics/gma900/ ). So, is there some reason the manufacturers program the card with allowable modes that are less than what the card is capable of? If yes, then why? (please don't mind my asking, I'm just being inquisitive.) I'll really appreciate if you could let me know.

Jay73,
Well, I did check and yes, my system does have HAL installed. And the screensaver works pretty fine, its just that the monitor does not get turned off at all when I'm in GNOME. Things work perfectly in KDE though. Any ideas about how to enable turning off the monitor by the system? (I can reach the screensaver settings, and get the options there about enabling/disabling the screensaver, and also for choosing different ones, but nothing about powersave. I also noted that my when my FC loads, it does load the HAL Daemon.) Thus its pretty much beyond doubt that my system has HAL Daemon, I just need to know how to activate it, and possibly change the values of idle times in it. And if you think I'm bugging you too much, please feel free to ignore me, haha!! (I'm sorry, but I've already asked you for a LOT of help, and I don't know how to thank you.)

Anyways, I'm going to fiddle with things here for a while, and let you all know if I make some progress.
Also, there is another thing I'd like to share: I just got to know how powerful 'yum' can be, and trust me, installing things via yum can be serious fun! I had the time of my life configuring my system for mp3's and all, haha... It was serious fun.

And last but not the least, thank all of you so much!