Well, after many failed attempts, I finally have OpenSuSE 11.4 installed and running properly on the old Compaq.

The primary issue is the system’s usage of a SiS 660 video card. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the card, chipset, performance, etc. The problem is with the auto-detect function of the OS (or windowing GUI).

OpenSuSE used to utilize SaX as a display configuration tool. Support was dropped in OS11.3 in favor of autodetection. That’s fine–if it works. And as often happens, mine was a case where it wouldn’t.

Fortunately, the developers still allow the system to recognize the xorg.conf configuration file. All of my searching on the internet turned up exactly nothing useful. Basically, I was told to “rebuild” xorg.conf. Well, instead of doing that, I just copied the old file from my 11.2 HDD and I’m back up and running. I just hope I don’t have the keep 11.2 around just so I can fix display issues, although I do have a backup of my xorg.conf file. I also hope the dev team doesn’t decide to stop all recognition of xorg.conf prior to development of SaX3.