kudos and an X problem

[Chris Dunn]

Having been an amateur user of Slackware for several years, and in that
time having barely scratched the surface of configuration of the system,
despite many hours of diligent study, I would like to express my
pleasure at the simplicity and ease of use that a change to Ubuntu 5.03 
has brought.

Quite simply, it works. Installing it on both my office and home boxes, I
discovered that it configured almost everything to sensible defaults. So
I am now able to use the box to greater effect, while the hours spent on
fine tuning in order to run applications should be greatly reduced. Most
of the popular applications that I require are available in base, and 
configured ready to run.

Kudos to the Debian and Ubuntu teams that brought it all to life.

Inevitably all is not perfect, and I've run into one large problem that
I've been unable to resolve, and would welcome input from anyone
interested, on how to overcome the issue.

On Slackware on my office box I was running Xorg 6.7.0 with Linux Kernel
2.6.10. The box contains the cheap i810 video chip, and my monitor is a
NEC Accusync LCD7v model.

With this set up, I was able to get a 1280x1024 screen resolution,
although I seem to remember having some difficulty getting it set up
initially.

Now, having shifted over to Ubuntu, I find it impossible to get
1280x1024 resolution. The best available is 1024x768 which does not make
optimum use of the monitor.

I've worked my way through the "Fix Video Resolution Howto" on the
Ubuntu site, and experimented with a bunch of other things, including
trying my old xorg.conf file from Slackware. Nothing seems to work, and
whenever I try to switch into 1280x1024 resolution I get "out of range"
errors.

Another minor issue is that my log-in screen, despite lines of
"ViewPort 0 0" in each "Subsection Display Depth" in xorg.conf shows up
with 1024x768 resolution, but with an oversize virtual screen (perhaps
1280x1024?).

And finally, why do I have a plain vanilla xorg.conf under
/usr/share/xresprobe/ ? What is the function of this file?

Can any kind soul offer a pointer as to the source of this confusion.

 
Chris Dunn
Fri Sep 16 14:56:00 EDT 2005