shoved ubuntu on an old laptop that can’t do winduz any more
seems to work much faster but screen only uses centre portion at low res and it’s a bit irritating
have JFG’d it and even had a go at sorting but don’t understand what to do
(tried to make a mdodeline – whatever TF that is – failed)

the randr page shows a max resolution of 800×600 but doesn’t specify monitor as vga or owt else which means anything with, eg “–output vga ..” just fails to register. I assume the screen lacks a relevant driver

Anyone clever enough to know how to do this (and tell a numpty) or will I just scrap the thing ? (am willing to spend max of about 30 mins before the latter happens so need an easy fix really. Is it too much like hard work?)

Have you connected the machine to the net yet? If not, when you do the machine may prompt you to download and install a hardware driver suitable to your graphics chip. You can prompt this check manually by going to system/hardware drivers.

Opening a terminal and typing ‘lspci’ at the command prompt should yield some useful info (accessories/terminal). What shows next to VGA compatible device? Google the device type on more appropriate forums, you should be able to find out quickly if you are going to resolve the issue.

Hi – cheers, will have a look

Just connect to the web, it’ll sort itself out.

Chances are someone else will have already tried it and found the answer, trick is not to look on Google but look for your laptop model here >>

http://www.linux-laptop.net/

Drill down on the make, model then hopefully there will be a few listings that will include the Linux distro you are using.

thanks y’aw – esp Russell

Just connecting didn’t seem to work – but:
“Here is my xorg.conf, so you can use it too. ” 🙂

(do I just paste it in ?)

in terminal “nano -w /etc/X11/xorg.conf” will bring up your existing xorg.conf file in a text editior you’ll see the commands along the bottom there’s a basics guide here

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/nano-basics-guide.xml

compare that xorg.conf against what you found prob worth a look at the ‘Device’ subsection and the ‘Monitor’ subsection device for the graphics card driver and monitor for the resolution(s) and colour depths.

Oh and make sure that the driver you have chosen has been loaded as a module use ‘lsmod’ to check that it’s been detected and loaded at boot up

If the xorg.conf is for the same laptop it may work. Go for it. Back up your old xorg.conf by renaming it, play safe. I presume you’ve found a web page where the help tells you how to do it.

*Edit – beat to it, more comprehensive advice from Russell…

I know it makes you sound a bit foolish but speaking from personal experience with Ubuntu, have you connected and run updates? There’s a 10.10 beta available, or just play safe and try Xubuntu low resource version. It works even on a P2 Thinkpad with 256MB RAM.

found a folder called xorg.conf.d

that contains 4 sub-files
05evdev.conf
10-synaptics.conf
10-vmouse.conf
10-wacom.conf

what if I rename that folder and create (how?) a new xorg.conf file then just pasting the whole xorg contents that I found into it ?

hairy – tried the LR thing first and had same display issue. that’s after an update. at the point I tried the “full” version but no better.

(don’t seem to have updated that 2nd one though – doing so now 😳 )

(my laptop is considerubbly shitter than yours, so might revert to the LR version)

Leave that folder alone, have a read of this

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config

Section II on resolution is prob the one to look at

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution

yeah russell, I found that stuff – even tried making a modeline but wouldn’t take it (kept telling me there was an error in command, despite multiple attempts)

frankly, if it’s that hard I don’t think I can be doing with it

gonna try the low-resource build again tomorrow & see if I can alter a single xorg file in that one

cheers

Mine was playing up and it took a few goes to find an Ubuntu-derived OS it could cope with. Have a look at their website, try Xubuntu, Lubuntu, Kubuntu, whatever, there are so many different versions. I’ve settled for Xubuntu as Lubuntu looked awful to me and there wasn’t any real difference.
You might want to check this forum too:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=329932

😳 😥

I’ve let myself down, I’ve let this forum down and I’ve surely upset linux fans everywhere

Machine is running well with an old Win ME 😯 setup

“Running well” and “Windows ME”!!!………you say you’re not highly I.T. literate, but with an achievement like that you should be gunning for Steve Balmers job! Glad you got it sorted.

wireless network ‘n’ everything 8)

Is it just defaulting to a screen pixel depth that can only work at a silly small resolution?

i.e. this thing is **soooo** old that the graphics adapter can support (say) 1024*768 at 16bits/pixel, but X11 is trying to drive it at 24 bits/pixel, so it ends up dropping back to 800×600?

If you think that might be plausible could you:

(a) Post the output of “lspci” here
(b) Send me the file /var/log/Xorg.0.log to confirm.

If that is the problem, then in the old days you’d just put “-bpp 16” on the command line for X11. I’m not sure where that goes in the brave new world of Ubuntu, but hopefully someone will.

luked – screen native res is (I believe) 1024/768
the rnadr screen stated max res was 800×600, offered no bigger options on the system menu.
where the screen props were shown on randr (Ive never done lspci) it didn’t have a line implying that the screen had been assigned a driver at all (ie the “vga” bit/line was missing when compared to examples online)

afraid I dunno about the rest – gave it up as too much work & shoved an old windows cd in instead (is only for my 8yr-old to pretend she has a laptop)

Well, I bet it’s easy enough to fix.

My xrandr doesn’t mention anything about VGA either. I’m not sure that xrandr isn’t a bit of a red herring. I could be wrong about this, but doesn’t it query the connected screens. If you’ve got a very old laptop perhaps that won’t actually work?

Anyway – similar advice to going tubeless applies. Stop. Have a beer. Then try again 🙂 Drop me an email if you want to give it a whirl.