This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Brad Wilson. Original Post: Virtual PC and Linux, Corrupted Display Feed Title: The .NET Guy Feed URL: /error.aspx?aspxerrorpath=/dotnetguy/Rss.aspx Feed Description: A personal blog about technology in general, .NET in specific, and when all else fails, the real world. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Brad Wilson Latest Posts From The .NET Guy

In my spare time I've been trying to get Linux installed into Virtual PC and failing pretty miserably. I've just discovered why.

If you look at the Virtual PC trouble-shooting questions, you'll see one that says "The virtual machine display appears corrupted...", which is what was happening. Buried in that little nugget is the fact that you cannot use a 15-bit or 24-bit display mode. You should use 16-bit or 32-bit only. All the Linux installs I'd seen up until this point had been defaulting to 24-bit display, which was causing the problem. So when setting up XFree86, you should use the s3 driver (S3 86c764/765) and a 16-bit color mode (I couldn't find a way to force a 32-bit color mode, but 16-bit color is just fine for my needs).

And now you know... (I swear I was under the impression that Microsoft was purposefully thwarting Linux installs for Virtual PC!)