Configuring Display

[andy baxter]

Zatlite Minthar wrote:
> Hi, 
>
> I've loaded xubuntu on my old machine. And the programs work fine. The installation defaults my display settings to 800x600 16bit color when it finished installing. Meaning my machine's hardware is not supported well. After hours of time spent fiddling and googling, I've managed to update my xorg.conf file with my monitor's horizontal and vertical sync values. 
>
> Section "Device"
> 	Identifier	"S3 Inc. Trio 64 3D"
> 	Driver		"vesa"
> 	BusID		"PCI:1:1:0"
> 	Option		"UseFBDev"		"true"
> EndSection
>
> Section "Monitor"
> 	Identifier	"Philips 150S"
> 	Option		"DPMS"
> 	HorizSync	30-61
> 	VertRefresh	56-76
> EndSection
>
> Section "Screen"
> 	Identifier	"Default Screen"
> 	Device		"S3 Inc. Trio 64 3D"
> 	Monitor		"Philips 150S"
> 	DefaultDepth	16
> 	SubSection "Display"
> 		Modes		"1024x768 at 60" "800x600 at 60"
> 	EndSubSection
> EndSection
>
> The problem is my crappy onboard vga card. When the color depth is set to 16 bit it displays with lots of vertical lines on the screen. 
> I've come across this same problem when I was trying out puppy linux and I was able to by pass it when I set the color depth to 15bit in the conf file. With this xubuntu(gutsy) installation though, I'm not able to do the same. Whenever I set the color depth to 15bit in the conf and restart, the machine only loads up to the log in screen. As I expected, the annoying vertical lines disappeared with this setting but xubuntu won't even let me type in the password. It shows the login screen  for a few secs and then it crashes and tries to load the login screen again. Can anyone suggest ways to get these lines to go away? I've tried setting the color depth to 24bits but that makes it worse and the machine just resets it to the lowest setting. 
>   
It might be worth doing the following:

- try to start X in 15 bit mode. Let it try to start X until it gives up.
- then do ctrl-alt-f1 to get a text mode terminal
- then log in as your normal user.
- then copy /var/log/Xorg.0.log to somewhere in your user's home directory.
(do this by typing cp /var/log/Xorg.0.log /home/<your-username>/Xorg.log)
- then post this file to the list.

This will let people see the log of the unsuccessful X session.