screen resolution problems with Hardy Herron

[Rashkae]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Michael "TheZorch" Haney wrote:
> 
>> Derek Broughton wrote:
>>> Robert Holtzman wrote:
>>>   
>>>> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008, Derek Broughton wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Robert Holtzman wrote:
>>>>>       
>>>>>> Damned strange. System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution works like
>>>>>> a charm on my box. That doesn't sound like a bug to me.
>>>>>>         
>>>>> Sounds normal to me.  Bugs that affect _everybody_ rarely make it into
>>>>> a
>>>>> stable release.  It's the ones like this that only effect some people
>>>>> that cause the trouble...
>>>>>       
>>>> What would make the bug only affect some users? Different hardware?
>>>  
>>> Definitely.  As usual, some hardware properly reports its capabilities to
>>> X, some hardware is well enough known that we can work around it, and
>>> some is just plain badly behaved...
>>>   
>> Regardless removing the ability to easily change your monitor settings
>> is a major downgrade in functionality rather than an improvement.
> 
> Nobody has "removed" the functionality - it just isn't available for all
> hardware.  It never has been, afaik.

However, a good case can be made that all those special rules and
oddball cases that were accounted for in the old debian xserver
configuration scripts should not have just been tossed out.  I know
several people who have switched from Ubuntu to Debian because their
hardware would not play nice with the new system, but works well with
Gutsy or Debian Unstable.

If anyone in a position to do something about it is reading this op-ed,
I think it would be a good idea to resurrect the old xserver
configuration scripts as an optional package that people with difficulty
can try.  (Or maybe include the xorg text mode configuration utility.
I'm assuming it's still part of xorg, though that may be a unsafe
assumption.)