Damn Small Linux (DSL) Forums

I know you think it's probably insane to try and use a 266 MHz and 76MB laptop in 2017, and I think the same, but insane or not, I wanna use it, for "making" something on that laptop is a project I do with my little bro. I get to teach him linux while I learn a thing or two at the same time.

First, I tried installing Slitaz linux, but it doesn't work. This laptop's graphics card uses the neomagic chipset. I tried Slitaz with Xorg, but no matter what I did Xorg didn't start. I'm not an expert in linux, I started using linux about 5 months ago, so I seek help.

After a few more tries I managed to get Slitaz 3.0 to load the display, but I got a very weird result which I couldn't fix. Now I tried with DSL and I got the same result. A display that looks like this:

(http://image.prntscr.com/image/a9f7ac2ea9e1454db3b3c76e16b505e3.png)

Can you help me fix this? Thank you!

I'm posting from a 120MHz Pentium I desktop, so I think we'll leave the sanity judgements out of the equation. :)

Strange graphics glitches are a common problem with laptops due to their unstandardised video modes. The "vga=" and framebuffer (eg. "fb800x600") boot commands (http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/wiki/cheat_codes.html) should, perhaps after some trial and error, provide a working configuration.

If you want to install DSL to the computer's HDD, the working graphics command can be added to the /boot/grub/menu.lst file, on the lines beginning with "kernel".

Thank you for your reply! I was able to get it to work using fbdev. Thank you! Your post was helpful.