Fedora 8 review (OT, Changing X' configuration)

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 2007-12-22 at 10:40 +0200, Gilboa Davara wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-12-21 at 20:19 -0500, Yaakov Nemoy wrote:

> > Let's not forget the moment where I'm standing in front of a class
> > about to give a presentation, and I have to reboot because I can't get
> > X to recognize the projector without that.  We're waiting for it to
> > reboot, and I start telling them stories about how the Fedora Art team
> > works, and just keeping people interested until I start the
> > presentation.
> > 
> > Let's see someone using Wintendo do that :P
> 
> Restart?!?!?!
> Shouldn't Zap (Ctrl-Alt-BS) or Logout work?
> 
> I can't remember ever having to restart the machine in-order to change
> something in X's configuration... (including driver.ko and X.org version
> updates)

On some machines, the external display DAC is off unless there is an
external display attached at boot time.  The controls for changing that
state of affairs dynamically are unreliable in some X drivers.

For example, I used to be able to cycle my Radeon-based Thinkpad through
internal and external displays with a function key, but that stopped
working in F8.  (Will file bug soon...)
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs