Blank screen after install on HP Pavilion DV6 Laptop

[rope]

Hello,

I have an HP Pavilion DV6 laptop with an AMD/ATI Mobility HD4650 video card. I've tried to install Mageia 2 64bit two times. Installation completes as expected, and after reboot, my screen flashes a few times with a '-' int the top left corner, then the screen becomes just black/blank. I can switch to terminals by hitting ctrl+alt+1,2...; On the first, there are some components witk 'OK'-s on the right, FAILED on 'intel amd microcomputer' (if I remember right). I can log in on terminal 2 with the provided username/password. During installation, I got a message saying I should enable the 'nonfree' repository, and install 'radeon-firmware' for proper 3D acceleration.

After some googling, I've found this: adding "acpi_osi=Linux" the all Mageia lines in /boot/grub/menu.lst . This is a workaround for an Acer laptop for the same kind of problem.
However, it's said to have side effects, possibly making the existing system unusable.

Also read a forum about first changing the video driver to vesa during the installation procedure, then look for amd drivers, I'm not sure about this method either.

What should I try first?

[rope]

Installed Fedora 17 64bit, which also crashed the same way after installing 12.4 AMD fglrx drivers (from site .sh). I hoped that Gnome3 incompatibility was my problem, so I installed Mageia again with KDE. No luck, similar symptoms, now I don't have to switch to ctrl alt 1, I got some lines of text on the screen saying: started lsd: ... something ... and [ok]s at the right. There was about 15 of this. So basically I think my problem is that I don't have a working desktop environment. In the non graphical grub, I edited "linux" entry, added acpi_osi=Linux to the end of both rows, and bootad again without success. I'm really running out of ideas... and forum posts too... am I the only one with this problem?

[Ken-Bergen]

As you've already installed and can get to a login prompt just login as root, run drakx11 and choose the xog | vesa driver.
Reboot into the desktop and use MCC to setup your repositories and enable non-free.
Run drakx11 again, accepting the default and choose Yes when asked about propitiatory driver.
Reboot and enjoy.

Oh and welcome to the forum.

[rope]

What I did:
Install Mageia again with Gnome 3.4. During the installation, I choose xorg|vesa. I got a minimalistic failsafe gnome environment, and I could go to Mageia Control Centrer. Here I clicked 'configure media sources for install and update'. The 'Add', and 'Update sources only'. I got 4 more element besides Mageia DVD, like nonfree, and tainted. I checked the nonfree to be enabled, but this wasn't enough for fglrx install. I had to 'Add' and 'Full set of sources', then from a much longer list I've checked Nonfree release (distrib15) and Nonfree Updates (Distrib17). Now I could install propietary drivers from drakx11, then accepted the default options, and I rebooted. Now I have a fully functional Gnome environment, looks nice, but unfortunately performance is sluggish (moving the windows, appearing menus, the animations are slow). In ubuntu, I could turn off 'sync for vblank' or something like that in a program called compizsettings. How can I improve overall performance in Mageia?

[doktor5000]

Well, maybe better ask in a Chakra-specific forum? http://www.chakra-project.org/bbs/