Best of Technical Support

How can I do an install with Corel 1.1 in text-based mode? Or, rephrasing the question: I'm trying to install Corel 1.1 on a laptop. Since Corel is GUI-based from the get-go, I get an unreadable screen during the install. I was able to do a Red Hat 6.2 install on the laptop, since I was able to put it into text mode during the install. Any words of wisdom on Linux laptop installs? —Ed, Ed.Werzyn@POBox.com

I think Corel requires a Vesa 2.0-compliant video card to install and doesn't offer a text mode install. If you really want to install Corel nonetheless, you can install it onto another machine, boot from an NFS+network+pcmcia boot floppy or CD (http://www.toms.net/rb/ for instance) and do an NFS copy of your installed distribution over to your laptop. —Marc Merlin, marc_bts@valinux.com

Hi, I seem to be having a slight problem. When I ctrl-alt F1-F6 from X or quit out of the wm, I am greeted with a blank console; everything I type on that console is blindly written. This happens anytime I go into X and back out to a console. I can issue a reset and I will get the console back, but soon as I go back to X and then back out, it's again blacked out (or no fonts/text showing). I have edited /etc/inittab for the alt + uparrow to issue a reset, but this is a workaround and very annoying. Does anyone know what is actually screwed up and how to fix? I recently compiled X 4.01 and it was fine up until the time I rebooted a day or so later for a kernel compile. I have seen this problem before, so it's not an X 4.01-specific problem. It's an “I screwed something up” problem, I am guessing. I am not running SVGAtextmode, nor are the fonts on console scrambled, they are just blacked out. —Steve Udell, hettar@home.com

If you aren't running your text mode in 80x25, try doing that. Some video drivers don't restore nondefault text modes very well, let alone deal with VesaFB (the graphical text console with a penguin boot logo). —Marc Merlin, marc_bts@valinux.com