Re-detecting the video card

[Alexander Antoniades]

On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 10:17:19 +0100, Mark C <lists at funkypenguin.net> wrote:
> I must admit, it probably me getting lazy, but these days, I just want
> to get my work done, when I first started using GNU/Linux around 6 years
> ago, I did not have a problem manually reediting my XF86Config file, but
> I feel these days, with the way GNU/Linux has evolved, these things
> should transparently happen in the background, or at least when you
> change say the video card, it loads the vesa module.

I agree. I asked the same question elsewhere in the mailing list and
was pointed to this wiki:
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/XautoconfigurationDebug?action=show&redirect=DebuggingXautoconfiguration

I thought this would reconfigure X automagically, but it seems to put
me into the usual Debconf screens. Of course the instructions don't
seem to work since you're instructed to login as yourself, and you
can't copy the Xfconfig file (at least I couldn't) without sudo or
being root.

>From my, albeit limited, experience Linux is way behind in terms of
device support from Windows. This is expected given the resources
involved and that practically all PC hardware is designed with Windows
support in mind, and this is changing by the day.

Knoppix is the clear exception to this since I've used it on literally
dozens of PCs. I've generally had better luck with Knoppix than
Windows PE, but Knoppix itself doesn't keep it's magic when it's put
on hard drive from what I've read.

That said I hope that some sort of X "safe mode" is found since X can
be so finicky when you have configure it manually.

Sander