Debian Now Only Booting To Command Line

I have a debian OS on a partition on my hard disk (sda1).
There was no sound because the ati rs880/radeon 4200 sound card needed drivers which were only in the debian 'non-free' version'.
So I added the non-free version to my install and also had to make a change to the GRUB bootloader file.
After that, I got sound.

Now I've installed a new debian distro to my second partition - sda2.
This time I ensured I installed the debian non-free version.
But I'm having trouble installing the drivers for the sound card.

I go into Synaptic package manager to install the relevant drivers and it gives me an error message:
Code:

Configuring libfglrx - install Fglrx driver despite unsupported graphics card?

I'm not sure what that means because I want the drivers for my sound card - not graphics.
When I press the 'Help' button, it says:
Code:

This system has a graphics card which is no longer handled by the Fglrx driver...
The above card requires either the non-free legacy Fgrlx driver 
(package fgrlx-legacy-driver) or the free Radeon driver (package xserver-xorg-video-radeon).

This is fine because I can just install the 'free Radeon driver'.

But the Help message then says:
Code:

Before the Radeon driver can be used you must remove Fglrx configuration from xorg.conf 
(and xorg.conf.d/)
Note that switching to the free Radeon driver requires the fglrx-driver package to be purged (not just removed).

So now I don't know what to do. Has anyone had this error message?
I know I can enable sound and have no problems with the graphics card because that's what happened with my original install on sda1.

But with the install on sda2, I don't know how to approach this problem.
Can anyone help please?

I previously installed kdenlive in previous Debian versions with the suggested command:

apt-get install kdenlive frei0r-plugins dvgrab recordmydesktop dvdauthor genisoimage

but it gives error messages in debian 8 saying packages not available

maybe my sources.list is wrong?

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 8.0.0 _Jessie_ - Official amd64 DVD Binary-1 20150425-12:54]/ jessie contrib main

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib

deb-src http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org jessie main

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
# A network mirror was not selected during install. The following entries
# are provided as examples, but you should amend them as appropriate
# for your mirror of choice.
#
# deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib
# deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib

What should I do?

Hi guys/gals.

I installed Debian Jessie with LXDE as my default desktop environment, no problems, except I can't play most games. So installed the Meta Package of the Gnome Desktop environment. Everything appeared to be ok, but when I went to reboot, all I get is a black screen.

I went to the Grub and typed in "nomodeset" to get me back to a desktop.
I uninstalled Gnome (not full removal), but still have the same problem.
When I restarted in safety mode, Gnome was still a desktop option that I could load, which I did. I'm confused. Do I need to do a complete removal?

I tried installing the nvidia graphic card driver as per the Debian manual, and that left me with only a root terminal and no GUI.

I've got about 2Gigs of ram and a 2.4 GHz Pentium 3 processor with an ASUS motherboard. (yes, it's a 12 year old computer, but not used for the past few years)

Any help would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Joe

Hello there! I'm completely new to linux; I've used ubuntu and other distributions but just at user level.
The problem is, I've got a Sony laptop with the inside H2O (3.9) BIOS, don't have the complete specs right now, but i can check them when i'm back at home. It has a NVIDIA 640M LE, 8gb ram, an Intel Core I7 processor, and a 750gb HD.
The screen, although working well enough, is broken, some plastic parts are broken also and it's not in good condition overall. It worked well in every aspect aside from those.
As i have a desktop, computer to work already, I don't need the laptop for working anymore, so I thought it could be a good idea to use it as an entertainment center in the living room, you know, for watching movies, playing some old-school games in local coop with and without emulators and so on.

I thought the still in beta SteamOS (Think it's a Debian-based distro) could be a nice option, so I've installed it. The installation process ran without issues till the first reboot; after that i only get "operating system not found" error and nothing else.
I unplugged the HD and made a complete installation from scrap with every reboot needed in my desktop computer and everything worked out fine: installing games, browsing the web, playing music, etc.
But, after plugging again the HD with the OS installed in the laptop I still get the same error; operating system not found.

Any ideas of how to solve it? Thank you in advance, and sorry about my english

I have installed a new Debian OS to try out the xfce desktop.
My radeon hdmi sound card needs non-free drivers and so I have no sound.
On my previous debian install with gnome desktop, I found a number of changes I had to make to get the sound working.

I have done all this with this new install with xfce.
However, one thing I haven't done yet is to change the System settings-Sound settings to use the hdmi sound card.
The problem is the xfce desktop doesn't have an icon for sound settings under System settings.

This is a bit weird. So I'm wondering if xfce has installed correctly or if it's missing a package so the System sound settings will show up.
Does anyone know what's going on?

I'm trying to install Debian 7.8 on my eMac G4 (700mhz, 640 Mb RAM). I've tried multiple methods but I keep running into problems one way or another. Since my eMac only has a Sony CD-RW drive and a busted Ethernet port I can't install from a DVD nor a netinstall CD which would be the easiest options unfortunately. First I tried using the multiple CD option, which seemed promising at first; until I had to swap to the next disk during "configure the package manager". it won't eject the CD when I use the eject key on my keyboard (imac g3 pro keyboard so I go back to the main menu and select the "eject a CD from the drive" option at the near bottom then things seem to get clustered. When I tried inserting the next disk, nothing else will install. It keeps telling me I need disk 1 again through every step. Then at the end, it tells me the installation is complete before I even install a desktop environment from the final CD. Then I just end up booting into garbled text and errors.

After all of that nonsense, I tried making a bootable USB from the DVD ISO with the OS X terminal. This method usually works with just about anything I've done before. However for some reason Debian apparently simply refuses to boot. As I tried selecting it on the boot menu on the start up, it gives me a black screen then goes straight back to the boot screen with disordered graphics. When I tried booting it from open firmware, it goes to the first screen, then when I hit enter to actually boot to the installer, nothing but errors. Finally I tried booting it straight from the ISO file on the hard drive, that method didn't even work at all.

Could someone point out what I'm doing wrong if possible or perhaps recommend me a different option?

Hello.

I am a newcomer to Linux, coming from Windows, desktop PC user. I already have a few months' experience with Ubuntu and Mint. I can handle some basic terminal commands, but I prefer the GUI whenever possible.

I'm not an IT specialist, far from it. Just a normal average computer user who can read a few things if they are understandable enough, and wants a decent operating system. So please speak to me in simple human terms, I can handle high tech jargon only so much. Thanks.

I have 2 main questions:

1. I've encountered problems when booting from LiveCD (written to USB) with both Mint and Lubuntu. The boot menu appeared but when I pressed any of the “try live” or “install” options, the screen froze with garbled checkerd pixels. Web searching for solutions, I found the thing with accessing special boot options and adding kernel parameters like 'nomodeset' and 'noaccel' and doing that I could proceed with installation. Then, after installing proprietary drivers, everything was fine.

This is not the first time this happened. As far as I understand this is related to the nouveau driver.

Does this happen only with some distros, like, for example, Ubuntu and its derivatives, or is it a larger problem from the main Linux kernel? From what I've read on some forums, such problems happened with other graphic cards as well, and it seems to be an old problem as old as 2011 if not older.

Why nothing could have been done to fix these issues so far? Couldn't all distros use some option from boot menu to either go with simple safe vesa graphics mode or a text based helpful install that might guide the user afterwards in downloading the proprietary drivers if s/he desires?...

And what is the main cause of the problem? Nvidia not doing FOSS drivers? Nouveau not being flexible enough? Linux kernel not keeping up? Particular distros that don't care about adding an extra boot option? A combination of all these? What is to be done? Would switching to other distro help in this regard? how would I know which distros use nouveau and which don't?

2. I'd like to look into other distros as well. What I need is stability, meaning as bug free as possible, as few apps hanging or crashing as possible, while still being user friendly. But no rolling realeases, please. I want to update the system without fear that I won't boot into desktop – again!

I need distros that come with multimedia codecs, Flash and stuff out of the box and also an easy option to install the proprietary video card graphics driver. I am all for FOSS, but for now I'm also being realistic, and unfortunately have to go with proprietary drivers.

What recommendations do you have?

Thank you.

So I've got 14.04 installed on a new computer I just built. All new hardware, new install, everything new. I had it all up and running for a few days. I got the nvidia drivers installed, installed steam and was even able to play some games. The last time I had it up it loaded fine, I played 'The Talos Principle', then rebooted to go back to windows. Now when I boot into linux it hangs after the login screen. You can look at my post history as I had this issue before. I was able to fix it that time, but I think it was a different cause.

Some things I've tried to date:
The most common suggestion I've found from googling this issue is to restart lightdm. I've done that to no avail.

I've tried simply entering tty from the frozen screen and then coming back out with Ctrl+Alt+F7. No dice there either.

I've also seen that some people needed to reset their graphics drivers when using nvidia. I tried to do that and I don't think it worked. When I try to purge all nvidia packages it always says "0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 16 not upgraded".
Results of dpkg:
Code:

$ dpkg -l nvidia*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait-Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-===================
un  nvidia-common  <none>       <none>       (no description available)
un  nvidia-prime   <none>       <none>       (no description available)

I'm gonna keep googling around in case I find something useful, but I fear I'm treading into water deeper than I know how to swim in and I'm worried that I'll screw something up if I start experimenting. I know just enough about linux to be dangerous. Any advice on what the results of dpkg above mean or suggestions about the problem would be much appreciated.

edit: Forgot to mention that the last time it was working I didn't make any changes to anything. I played a game and rebooted. Suddenly things are broken.

Hi all,
This is my /etc/apt/sources.list of jessie, what's wrong as I am getting the following error output .

error :-

Code:

Err http://http.debian.net jesssie/main Sources
  404  Not Found [IP: 54.192.190.154 80]
Err http://http.debian.net jesssie/contrib Sources
  404  Not Found [IP: 54.192.190.154 80]
Err http://http.debian.net jesssie/non-free Sources                                                                                            
  404  Not Found [IP: 54.192.190.154 80]
Fetched 7,819 B in 25s (307 B/s)                                                                                                               
W: The repository 'http://http.debian.net jesssie Release' does not have a Release file. This is deprecated, please contact the owner of the repository.
W: Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/jesssie/main/source/Sources  404  Not Found [IP: 54.192.190.154 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/jesssie/contrib/source/Sources  404  Not Found [IP: 54.192.190.154 80]

W: Failed to fetch http://http.debian.net/debian/dists/jesssie/non-free/source/Sources  404  Not Found [IP: 54.192.190.154 80]

E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead.

This is my /etc/apt/sources.list :-

Code:

[$] cat /etc/apt/sources.list                                                                                                       [2:23:45]
#### testing  #########
deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie main contrib non-free
deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian jesssie main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

# testing-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
#deb http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://http.debian.net/debian jessie-updates main contrib non-free

Now I am guessing one or more of the entries above are wrong, as probably all of testing-updates would probably come into play once jessie is released, right ?

This was generated via http://debgen.simplylinux.ch/ for lack of better places to generate sources.list from.

Distributor ID: Debian
Description: Debian GNU/Linux 7.8 (wheezy)
Release: 7.8
Codename: wheezy


sudo apt-get upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
chromium dnsmasq-base icedtea-7-jre-jamvm iceweasel libcurl3 libcurl3-gnutls libxml-libxml-perl ntfs-3g openjdk-7-jre openjdk-7-jre-headless
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 10 not upgraded.


When I try to install libcurl3-gnutls I get:

sudo apt-get install libcurl3-gnutls
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
libcurl3-gnutls : Depends: libgnutls-deb0-28 (>= 3.3.0) but it is not installable
Depends: librtmp1 (>= 2.4+20131018.git79459a2-3~) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.


This is my sources:
/etc/apt/sources.list


deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main non-free contrib

deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main non-free contrib
deb-src http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy-updates main non-free contrib