Problems upgrading/installing Edgy

[Don Dwiggins]

I've been running Breezy on my computer for a while, having never gotten 
around to upgrading to Dapper, and decided this weekend to upgrade to 
Edgy.  I did this by upgrading first to Dapper (using the apt-get 
commands as instructed by the wiki), which went OK, then using 
upgrade-manager to go to Edgy.

At the end of the process, I had a system which would boot, but would 
hang up with a black screen with a small X in the middle.  After some 
investigation, I found a sort of workaround: I'd edited my xorg.conf 
file to get Breezy to allow me to use the higher resolutions on my 
monitor; by restoring the original file, I can get into Edgy, but only 
at 640x480.

I also downloaded the distribution ISO and burned a CD.  The CD works 
fine on my laptop, but when I try it on the computer I want to run it 
on, I can never get it to a stable state.  It brings up the login 
screen, then when I hit Enter, it goes as far as showing the background 
and system bar, then bombs out back to the login screen.

So, I'm guessing that Edgy doesn't like my display hardware, which is a 
Dell Trinitron monitor driven by a 3Dfx Voodoo 3 adaptor.  As I 
mentioned, Breezy handled it well, as does my Windows OS, at 
1280x960x60hz, with 16-bit depth.  (I played a bit with 915resolution, 
but it doesn't work with my hardware.)

So, is it worth fooling with xorg.conf to try to get Edgy to accept it, 
or should I just give up and drop back to Dapper?  Or is there a clean 
way to introduce Edgy to my display hardware?

Thanks for any good words,
-- 

Don Dwiggins
don at dondwiggins.net
   "The truth will make you free,
    but first it will make you miserable"
      -- Tom DeMarco