Nothing Displaying After Start-Up

[Kly367]

Alright, I'm new with all of this, including these forums so sorry if I'm in the wrong place for this but, here is my question.

I put Ubuntu on the CD and then installed it on my computer. By doing so I accidentally overwrote Windows, although that's no huge loss because I didn't have anything on there anyways. The problem now is, when I try to start Ubuntu up, it will let me go to the menu, and I can pick to run from the CD or the drive, and for either one it will just load, then go to a pinkish tannish colored screen, then black, with nothing else there but the mouse. I'm wondering what I did wrong or what I should do to fix this so it works. If anyone could help me that would be great. Thanks.

[Kly367]

I also want to add that I don't believe anything went wrong with the installation, as I reinstalled it to make sure nothing went wrong the first time, but the same thing still happened.

[jiangshi]

Greetings, Kly367!

Yes, this is getting to be a common problem with 8.10. I have tested 6 machines that are capable of running SuSE Linux and Windows, but will not run Ubuntu 8.10. This set of machines includes Dell, Gateway, ASUS MB Athlon 32 bit and 1 64 bit machine. Most of these machines will run earlier versions of Ubuntu without problems.

I'm guessing that the problem in most cases is related to the graphics hardware, whether it is a card or integrated into the motherboard. I've had the same problem with either. I am also guessing that major changes were made between 8.04 and 8.10 in this area, since 8.04 will work on these machines. In one case, I had to drop back to 7.10. Regardless, none of this solves your problem.

As I see it, you have a couple of choices. 1) Try an earlier version of Ubuntu, like 8.04. 2) Try Xubuntu. This is the choice I made since it works great on my main desktop machine when Ubuntu 8.10 gave me the same results as you. 3) Go to a different distro of Linux. If you go this route, I highly recommend SuSE, especially 10.1 or 10.2. It installs as easily as Ubuntu and it will most likely work with your existing graphics setup. SuSE also requires much less commandline usage than Ubuntu.

Don't get me wrong, I like Ubuntu, and I remain committed to helping it get better and grow, but despite the hype, it is not necessarily the "best" distro nor is it particularly the easiest to install and use. These really boil down to personal preferences and become subjective anyway.

Good luck!

~jiangshi

[Kly367]

Thanks I'll try one of your suggestions and then see if it works. If not, I can just try another. ;)