Xorg not starting after initial install

On Saturday 28 January 2006 20:24, BlackTopBum stood up and spoke the
following words to the masses in /alt.os.linux.gentoo...:/

Xander said something like a ...

Awesome! /dev/input/mice worked.
Excellent ... ran into the same problem myself when they, the dev
guys, made the switch to mice from mouse.

I realize now how much I don't know about linux after installing
gentoo. 5 years of hp-ux, with a few of years of redhat (with the
nice gui installer) tacked on top of that, and I feel rather . . . .
. humbled.
Guess it's been 5 or 6 years now for me since the escape from MS and
I'm *always* learning something new. That's part of why I enjoy Linux
so much. And, yes, keeps me humbled too. Some of these posters - e.g.
J.O Aho, Aragorn, Bit Twister to name a few - are phenomenal. 8p

Thanks for the compliment! ;-)

I don't consider myself as someone who escaped from Windows, because I
was never really trapped by it. I've only used Windows 3.0 and 3.1 for
a meager six months, and pending the public availability of OS/2 2.0,
which was a genuine 32-bit operating system, and thus in my opinion a
much better candidate for my i386 PC.

After having used OS/2 for about five years, I needed a new computer,
and as my friends were all on Windows 95 and there was no such thing as
cable internet here back then, I had to find a way to create compatible
documents and be able to open theirs. Yet, I also didn't want to go
back to the stone ages and use Windows 95 - which was only a tighter
integration between DOS and the Windows GUI - on a Pentium II.

I was actually looking for a UNIX operating system, as I believed - and
still believe - that this is the best possible system architecture.
Yet, proprietary Unix was extremely expensive.

I hadn't heard of FreeBSD yet, and I was under the impression that
GNU/Linux was still very much beta stuff. And like I said, I didn't
have an internet connection. So I made a compromise and did something
that was quite rebellious in 1997: I purchased a copy of Windows NT
4.0.

I've used NT for about two and a half years, and the last month of that,
it was in dual-boot with a Linux Mandrake 6.0 PowerPack that I had read
about and found in a software shop. I used GNU/Linux more than I did
NT, but as I had paid for NT and for Office97, I still wanted to hold
on to it.

On January 1st 2000, NT refused to boot up and dumped a blue screen on
my eyes, despite the Y2K updates and the Service Packs. GNU/Linux
still worked fine, so I stuck with that.

When I then again went to order a new machine - a Pentium III - I
originally planned on installing it in dual-boot again, but with
Windows 2000 this time, as I still had my Office97 and wanted to use
that. I'm not much into "consume & dispose of", hence that original
decision.

On the other hand, I was ordering a serious machine, capable of 24/7
uptime - it had 384 MB (Rambus) RDRAM and a U160 SCSI hard disk - and I
was wondering what the Hell I would need two operating systems for.

So after thinking about it for about a day max, I decided to drop the
operating system that least appealed to me and stick with GNU/Linux.
Technically, it was what I had always wanted - a UNIX system - and it
brought me the acquaintance with the wonderful concepts of Free & Open
Source Software.

I have to date never regretted that choice for as little as a minute. I
was already exclusively using GN/Linux when cable internet became
available here in town, and I then joined the newsgroups - not to ask
questions, but to share what I had learned about the system with those
who were still new to it.

Despite what many people believe, the typical Windows PC market is only
a small figment of IT. Serious IT professionals have always stuck to
UNIX systems, for all of the obvious reasons. And that is where I now
feel I belong, eventhough I may by far not have the knowledge that
everyone thinks I have.

What I can say is that by using GNU/Linux, and by not being afraid of
reading the /man/ pages and the /HowTos,/ I have come to learn a lot
more about IT than I had learned in all the years before that.

GNU/Linux literally has changed my life in many ways. I've gotten to
know people I would otherwise never have met, I've gotten to learn more
about networking and operating system technology, I've become a player
in some areas where I would never have dreamed of going before - such
as having my own domain and running an IRC network with a couple of
buddies - and I've become a genuine GNU/Linux and FOSS advocate.

I dislike Microsoft - I really do - and I dislike Windows as an excuse
for an operating system. Both of those dislikes however did not
originate from my experiences with either Windows NT or Microsoft, but
from seeing them for what they really are, now that I know all that I
know. ;-)

Of course, I have also learned a great deal from simply reading the
posts of others. In /alt.os.linux.mandrake,/ this used to be Peter T.
Breuer - he doesn't subscribe to the group anymore because he doesn't
quite have the patience to deal with newbies, but you can still read
him on /comp.os.lnux.misc/ and a few other groups.

Here in /alt.os.linux.gentoo,/ I find that J.O. Aho, Arthur Hagen, Ben
Measures, Paul Bredbury, as well as yourself and a few others appear to
be very helpful. ;-)

I also see the phenomenon - and I see my own evolution in that - of
people who are already more or less knowledgeable about GNU/Linux
joining a newsgroup, answering loads of questions from others, learning
more themselves, seeing those "others" grow more knowledgeable, and
then those very smart people from the beginning are getting more and
more replaced in the flurry of replies by those who have in the
meantime learned so much more.

And then the newbies they are replying to become more knowledgeable and
start sticking around to help other newbies, while the /elders/ move on
to more challenging groups, or just leave Usenet altogether. You get
to miss the /elders,/ but it's nice to see how the community grows...
;-)