Re: No luck reconfiguring resolution options.

kaldrenon wrote:
For each depth listed under Section "Screen", my xorg.conf contains
the line:
Modes "1440x900" "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x854"
"1280x800" "1280x768" "1200x800" "1152x864" "1152x768"
after I removed "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" from each line and
saved the file. However, the only resolutions I can set it to are
those three, which are absent from the list. I've done dpkg-
reconfigure xserver-xorg and modified xorg.conf plenty of times now,
each time explicitly attempting to prevent any resolution below
1152x768 from even being an option, but every time I come back to
1024x768.

As I mentioned earlier, it seems that the newer versions of X have gotten "smart" and tend to ignore/override settings made in the xorg.conf file. Arg!! I have no idea how to force X to use the settings in its conf file; (it's almost like X has gotten to be like MS-Windows; it knows better than the sys admin...). Maybe one of the more X-literate folks on this list can help. Takers?


I'm using the driver "i810" - an Intel driver for the Intel chip
driving the graphics in my (*sigh*) Dell laptop. I tried replacing it
with svga and vga in xorg.conf and restarting gdm, but both times X
failed to start, so I'm back on "i810" and still unclear about why I
can't use a resolution higher than 1024x768, especially since I used
higher when this computer was running WinXP.

That means you're using shared video memory. As I understand it, Windows ignores the BIOS setting for shared video memory, while Linux honors the BIOS setting. So if you haven't already checked that setting in the BIOS, that's what I'd do next.

You might look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log for hints as to what's going wrong. It might tell you how much video RAM it finds, or why it can't use certain resolution settings, or what the color depth is, etc, although to be honest, the log really isn't meant to be read by mere non-developer mortals, and probably won't do you a great deal of good.

(If you hear a note of exasperation in my tone, it's because I absolutely love Debian (and very much appreciate the developers), but I'm so frustrated that still, years after normal people started migrating to Linux in general and complaining about its developer-centric nature, it's a nightmare to configure in many cases. Of course, we mere users shouldn't complain, I reckon; after all, we get a great OS for free without doing any coding ourselves. So, apologies developers; I'm just blowin' steam.)


--
Kent


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