Hello, this is my first post here.
I have installed the Lxle distribution, which is a Ubuntu derivative.
I used the live DVD a number of times until I decided that this distribution (the 12th tried) may be the right one for me coming from Windows. The live DVD performed ok. The installation worked fine. I created a root partition, swap partition and a /home partition.
Upon booting from hard disk, I had a black screen. After investigating this on the internet, I found that I need to add a 'nomodeset' to the linux line in the boot process. This allowed the boot process to be visible and a completed screen came up. However, the resulting screen is only 640x480 on a 1024x768 screen size.
The computer is a low level notebook (Dell Inspiron 1100).
It appears that the screen is not identified correctly and defaults to show 640x480 pixels.
Could someone please tell me how to change this default to 1024x768 so that I end up with a full screen?
Then how do I change the boot process to include the 'nomodeset' permanently?
As it is common on Linux systems, a file will probably need to be modified, could you please refer to the file with the full path, as I have no understanding of the file structure yet, and where to look for a file.
Thank you.

Hi,
What bootloader is shipped with your distro? Might be grub2. If so locate the line GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600 in /etc/default/grub and change it to what fits for your laptop.
You could use
nano /etc/default/grub to do it.

Thanks for the reply.
Found the file and found the GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480 entry. But it is commented out with the '#' at the start of the line.
Therefore, I believe that the default must be coming from somewhere else. Or, If I uncomment this and change the resolution to 1024x768, will this take precedence?

Even though I had trouble with permissions, I managed to to make the change.
I rebooted, still black screen. Rebooted with the 'nomodeset' added to grub. Screen had no change. Showed the thick line at bottom (in 640x480) during boot and then at the end showed the screen in 640x480 again.
No change. The default resolution for the screen is still 640x480.
Where do I go from here?

GRUB_GFXMODE affects only GRUB, not your console or Xorg.
What graphics card you have? (Run lspci.)

The lspci showed the graphics card as "VGA Compatible Controller: Intel Corporation 8284G/GL [Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03)".
Thanks

For grub2, you have to be root to edit, forgot to mention it.
You also have to make it take changes. On my distro it is with, as root :
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Might be different on yours (update-grub?)
For adding permanently the nomodset option find in /etc/default/grub the line
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=""
And change it to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodset"
Don't forget to run as root
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Or whatever the command is for your distro.

For the screen resolution, I found that :
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2249425
It seems that passing a VGA=792 option to grub could be ok for you. Otherwise you will find in the thread a link to another way to configure your screen.

Is that 82845G/GL? My 11-year old Shuttle box down in the basement has onboard 82845G/GL graphics; last time I tried it (early spring) it didn't like current Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or PCLinuxOS. I think I finally got it running with a recent Puppy Linux variant.

Tonus, thank you for recommendations.
I've done the Grub2 modification to add 'nomodeset'. It appeared to work.

Now, the resolution - "passing a VGA=792 option to grub" sounds like a simple task. However, coming from windows, that task is anything but simple. Could you please tell me how to do that.
I looked at the link you provided. That solution is totally different. If the VGA=792 fails, I'll try that option.
Thanks

Seems that the VGA option is deprecated in grub2... Found that link that is quite complete and could be useful :
https://wiki.sabayon.org/index.php?title=HOWTO:_Using_Custom_Framebuffer_Resolution_with_GRUB2

Good luck and ask for more if difficult (answering from my phone, so have to be brief...).

try adding this to the linux line in booting
Of remove nomodeset and use this