X and Fluxbox :: Live CD Boot - Can't View Desktop



Hey all, first of all thanks for reading this post. as you can see i'm a noob at this, so let me get to the point.  I have a horribly old laptop running Win98 and has 32 MB of RAM.  I've been Internet searching and found DSL as the best OS to use on clunky laptops.  I can boot the live disc but the desktop is is grainy and pixelated, using only the colors white and green.  I can make out icons but can't read text.  I've tried some boot options at the beginnning regarding Xvesa and fluxbox, but they haven't worked.  (i used this post: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=431472 on another forum as a reference, cuz this guy had the same problem).  can anyone tell me how i can get it to work. it works on one of my other beast computers, so i know the cd's checksum is ok and all.  plus, i am really not in the ballpark of upgrading the comp's hardware in any way.

thanks so much, matt.
Try booting like this:

boot: dsl vga=normal

or like this

boot: fb800x600

Note: the first one has dsl the second one does not.
Thanks for the commands, but they were to no avail.  After using each of them, I got the menu asking me to choose between xvesa and xfbdev, but after half an hour of trying different combos of options, such as color depth, resolution, and the like i got nowhere.  here is the screen i get when i just press enter at the initial boot prompt:



and here is another screen i got as i was trying different options from the evesa/xfbdev menu:



do you know of anything else that will work?  thanks SO MUCH.
Since you cannot read the screen very well, try this:

boot: dsl 2

At the root prompt type this:

# grep XDESC /etc/sysconfig/knoppix

Then post the results here.

It might be the case that you will need the full XFree86. But we do have a unc version which might work with such low memory.

But al least lets learn what type of video you possbily have.
well, i for some reason the CD keeps stalling out after typing your above solution (roberts) but i was actulaly able to figure it out after looking at the menu again for a little while

for my computer at least, i typed (at the initial boot prompt)

dsl xsetup dsl vga=789

where 789 is the code for 16.7 mil colors at 800x600 resolution.  Later in the boot, when prompted b/w xvesa and xfbdev, i chose xfbdev (press ok) and selected no USB mouse (i have a laptop), no imps/2 mouse, BUT i chose ps2 mouese (press ok) with 3 bttons, (press ok), and finally choose us keyboard and press ok.

*this is off the live cd and on a laptop, but i plan to boot off a hard drive in the future.

thanks roberts for your time, for now i'm good on the graphics portion of dsl (looks awesome!), just need to figure out that ethernet card... :)
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