Salix Forums

I have a problem with SalixOS.

Just to give some background, I've been trying to find a good, easy to use and (most importantly) lightweight and stable Linux distribution for use in the office where I work. Its only a small office, so money is tight for IT things and we need something that just works (MS software is just not worth the expense anymore).

Anyway, one of the main issues is that my computer at work uses a wireless network adapter (USB) from TP-Link (model no: TL-WN821N) and no distribution can detect this device, except openSuse, but on that distribution it will not detect the network we are on.

I read some favourable reviews of Salix and thought I'd try that. I installed it to a partition on the harddrive. I used to have Debian installed there (just to try out), so I used the swap partition that was there and reformated the linux partition under ext4.

BUT, the problem is that when you boot up, at the login screen, the computer just freezes, either while typing the username/password, or (if I can get that far) after its logging in, so all I get then is a grey screen with the mouse pointer. The mouse still moves, but you cannot do anything.

I don't have enough knowledge of linux to try anything fancy here (I'm enthusiastic about linux, but only as an enduser, I'm not used to the linux command prompts etc.).

The computer does have an Intel graphics card (model: 82865G) and I have come accross posts about the intel cards causing problems. There always seemed to be a recommendation to try to download different drivers, but, as I don't even know if the network card will work, I am not sure that it will really work here.

Can anyone recommend a good course of action to try and get the GUI working? I can download things on another computer and put them onto a USB flash drive, that is not a problem, but I would appreciate some help, as I'm kind of stuck.

The computer does have an Intel graphics card (model: 82865G)

I'm quite sure we already address this problem around here...
Maybe here on the wiki : http://www.salixos.org/wiki/index.php/S ... ideo_cards

For your USB key, it seems some patches are need in the kernel and a driver needs to be compiled : http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/TL-WN821N
I may give it a try to build all this for you...but obviously I cannot test.

You are right. We could try a different driver for that Intel card first. Assuming you are using the 32 bit version,
the xf86-video-intel diver packages are located here:
http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware-13.0/slackware/x/
and here:
http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackware-1 ... alternate/
Download all the .txz files to an USB stick and mount it in Salix text mode (hit ctrl+alt+f1 to get a login console). You should do a "init 3" to shutdown the X server, then change to a different driver version with "upgradepkg driver-xyz.txz" and finally start the X server with "init 4" again (perhaps you have to press ctrl+alt+f7 afterwards).

Furthermore you can copy the following 3 log files to your usb stick to investigate them further:
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
/var/log/messages
/var/log/syslog

Thank you very much for your responses. I wish all Linux forums were this friendly.

@JRD, I would be interested in that build arrangement, if you have the time and don't mind. Thank you.

@thenktor, I will try that as well, thank you for your advice.

That is certainly it. You need to try a different version of the intel driver. Follow the instructions on that wiki page and you'll probably find a version that works fine. If all else fails, you can remove the intel drivers and just use vesa. hint: you can boot your PC into init 3, instead of init 4, so you don't load Xorg on boot. To do that, when you get to the lilo boot screen, hit the tab key and type linux 3. You can login using the console and use slapt-get normally then.

Yes, "Linux 3" at the Lilo screen is even better to get to runlevel 3. After updating the driver you can still use "init 4" to startup X.

@gapan: slapt-get won't work for him because he probably has no internet connection

thenktor wrote:@gapan: slapt-get won't work for him because he probably has no internet connection

Right! I didn't read that close. But he can get all xf86-video-intel versions in a usb drive and try them one by one using removepkg/installpkg and then test with startx.

links to packages in slackware i486 repos next:
ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/slackware/s ... i486-1.txz
ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/slackware/s ... alternate/

and for x86_64:
ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/slackware/s ... 6_64-1.txz
ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/slackware/s ... alternate/

Basically that's what I've said in my first post

Ok, just to update you all:

I finally had a chance to try fixing SalixOS on my work machine today.

I tried to install the intel drivers. I mounted a usb flash drive with all the drivers I could find on the servers (1.5.1, 1.6.3, 1.7.1, 1.8.0 and 1.8.1....if I remember correctly). The bad news is that none of them worked. They either froze (the case in the later versions) or they just did not work properly (there would be like a tear in the middle of the screen and if you pressed a button then it would just get worse, I can't remember the technical term for it right now (too tired)).

In the end I uninstalled all intel drivers and just left it with the vesa driver. Unfortuantely, this means I have to run 640x480 for now.

The network adapter does not work unfortunately, but at least I have a gui. I would be curious to know if there is any way to get the intel card working at all? I'd like a little higher resolution. Maybe somebody has any ideas at all? Maybe an older driver or so?

Also, I have one curious question to ask: is it possible to install salix onto a USB flash drive and treat it like a harddrive? Or is that not possible? I haven't had time to try it, but I would be curious to find out if anyone knows?

Thanks again for all your help. Hopefully I can get SalixOS running properly on the computer, so I can migrate to it as much as possible.

I have kept the log files which were requested in one of the previous posts. I'll upload them tomorrow, when I get back to work. Maybe they can help.

I don't think an older driver will work. You can try the newer one from slackware-current: ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/slackware/slac ... 6_64-1.txz (please mind the richt arch!).

If you want to run Salix from a USB key, I'd suggest you try Salix Live.