Hey yall,
First off thanks in advance for looking this over, if you have any advice +kudos! I'm a long time linux advocate and while I haven't used linux in a while(10+ years) in my experience I think this is a driver issue. Personally I'm miffed because we used to have more control over the installation process, now it reminds me too much of *doz. Plug and Play is plug n pray... I've installed a live build to my Acer Aspire 9800; let's just say it's the only image that I've had the best luck with. My problem thus far is that it seems to be using Intel video drivers rather than the nVIDIA driver that come stock. Back in the day this wouldn't be an issue because i could predetermine which drivers to be used, let alone many other things. Either way i could be wrong. I have no issues booting to a live version but once i install i have the following issues.
The first thing which i'm sure is a config issue is grub(i miss lilo). I can't make out the image it's scrambled however i can still make my choices when deciding to boot. I've booted to live mounted the installed sda and altered grubs resolution and have had no success(640x480 - 1200x1024). Truth be told I can fly blind so it's something I can live with.
My main issue is that once I boot to log in, not only is my mouse cursor not looking like a pointer(scrambled and discolored), Kali crashes after a few clicks. I've tried dropping down to a tty but all that happens there is a discoloration of the infamous kali image. Here again flying blind, I've logged in and tried #service gdm3 stop which gives me a solid black screen.
Here's what I know. The Acer Aspire 9800 has a nVIDIA Geforce Go 7600 which is supported by nouveau, which is what the live version uses. Keep in mind i have no issues running the live build off my usb drive and i'm sure i'd have no issues even if it was on a CD. However the installed version is using the intel drivers, my guess here is that while the GPU is nVIDIA the board is Intel. I guess what I don't understand is why does the live version work without a hiccup while the installed version is having issues?
Another question is there a way for me to make a live-build that will only use the nVIDIA drivers? Or a way to install the actual live image that seems to run properly? I would run live but i can't do much with it I'm only allotted 1.6g of storage. Could this be an issue with the debian installer recognizing my video card as intel when in fact its an nVIDIA GPU?
On a final note I know that not every distro is going to work flawlessly on every machine out there, however in theory with linux a few edits of config files and it should run enough to do what you need it to do. If yall need to see the logs i have them, and suggestions will be tested, unless I've already attempted them. Again thanks so much for looking this over and hopefully we can get this beast up and running.
Sentily
