Dell Inspiron 5160 video problems while installing Fedora C2 Linux, HELP!

Question

Hi, I just bought a Dell Inspiron 5160 laptop with WinXP HE preinstalled. The system is : - Mobile Pentium® 4 Processor 518 w/HT Technology (2.80GHz, 533MHz FSB) - 15 inch XGA LCD Panel - 1G RAM - Video card: 32MB DDR XGI® Volari™ XP5 AGP 4X Graphics - BIOS: A5 (This is the latest that dell has for this model). I used Partition Magic to resize and repartition the 80G drive and installed Fedora Core 2. I had problems from the get go: during installation the video was all smudged and shadowy with a lot of black pixels so I couldn't even read most of the installation screens. So I went to text installtion and installed successfully and system boots but with text only. No GUI. After a lot of struggle and hand editing my '/etc/X11/xorg.conf' file I got the GUI to come up but still it's very smudgy and impossible to view like you can read the very large size font with diffucutly and you can see X-ray like shadows of the icons and images. Cleary this is not what I was hoping for for my investment. I tried to go to the XGI website xgitech, for linux drivers but they point you to the Dell website, which by the way has no information whatsoever about the systtem, I mean technical stuff like appropriate Vsync and Hsync rates, etc. So my Questions are: 1) Has any one successfully installed FC2 on Inspiron 5160 with GUI? and if so please post how you resolved the LCD problem? 2) If Not , can I install another flavor of linux that is known to work on this system? and which one? 3) If non of the above, does this mean it's money down the drain and I won't be able to use linux on my laptop ever, or what should I do to to achieve that.? Below are portions of my xorg.conf (that I thought maybe relevent) if it helps: I really appreciate any help. ThanX in advance. Leopard____. PS. The system works perfectly well in XP in the dual boot mode. Alos works fine in text only mode with Fedora2. >>>>>>>> Section 'ServerLayout' Identifier 'Default Layout' Screen 0 'Screen0' 0 0 InputDevice 'Mouse0' 'CorePointer' InputDevice 'Keyboard0' 'CoreKeyboard' EndSection Section 'Monitor' Identifier 'Monitor0' VendorName 'Monitor Vendor' # ModelName 'CPD-E200' DisplaySize 330 240 HorizSync 30.0 - 60.0 VertRefresh 48.0 - 60.0 Option 'dpms' EndSection Section 'Device' Identifier 'Videocard0' Driver 'vesa' VendorName 'Videocard vendor' BoardName 'VESA VBE 2.0' EndSection Section 'Screen' Identifier 'Screen0' Device 'Videocard0' Monitor 'Monitor0' DefaultDepth 24 SubSection 'Display' Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 Modes '1024x768' '800x600' '640x480' EndSubSection EndSection <<<<<<<<<<<<

Nospoonzz · Answer

Back in the day I used to run an Inspiron 8200 with SuSE Linux. Version 8. or 9.0 I forget. Anyways That Inspiron 8200 had a Geforce4Go 64meg card and I had no problems at all whatsoever with that notebook. The day I got it I became a dual booter. I had installed Windows 2000 Pro on one partition and Linux on the other. I ran the most popular games at the time under Linux. Games like RTCW, UT, Q3, UT2003 and so on. Now I find it just so much easier and so simple to just stick with Windows XP Pro. There are drivers for everything. I just have too many things to do to be spending my time editing this and that and looking for this driver or that driver. Just my 2 cents.

AtlanticWorks · Answer

I found a driver that will work with the XGI Volari XP5 video card that comes with the Dell Inspiron 5160. As you may or may not know, XGI used to be Trident. The Trident CyberBladeXP driver works great with my 5160! I currently have it set at 1024x768 with Millions of Colors. The driver was included in FC3, and probably many other linux distros. I hope this helps someone, because I couldn't find this info anywhere. I just hope google catches this!

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