down the LCD panel rabbit hole

[brian]

I apologise for the length; I've tried to cover as much as I (vaguely) 
understand. I hope I haven't left anything out.

I've just purchased an LCD panel, Dell S2209W, and am trying to get the 
resolution sorted out. The device is rated for 1920x1080.

In System/Admin/Display, the hardware is set to

SIS 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA

In configure the Monitor Type:
Generic CRT 1024x768

I changed this to "Generic LCD 1920x1080", logged out and back in as 
advised, and the display was now very blurry as well as stretched 
horizontally. When I went back into Display settings, I see that it's 
back at CRT 1024x768, which is odd considering the drastic change.

System/Preferences/Display showed "Monitor Unknown". Also (and I may be 
showing serious ignorance here) do I need to set the refresh rate for an 
LCD? I'm thinking no.

I backed up xorg.conf and added "1920x1080" to the modes section, 
restarted X.

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes    "1920x1080" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

The resolution looks good, however I'm seeing a lot of flicker. I came 
across a site [1] that mentioned a limitation of the onboard SiS760 chip 
that can lead to flicker. Maybe this is the problem but, given how 
simple changing the resolution was, I'd like to see if there other 
solutions. That site has a lot of information about my chipset and linux 
but, frankly, my head is spinning. I have no idea if I *need* to install 
a new driver and don't want to go this route blindly.

I then opened System/Admin/Display again and this time, the resolution 
is set to 1152x864 (the highest it goes) and monitor type is still CRT 
1024x768. So, now I don't know what to believe. I switched it back to 
"Generic LCD 1920x1080" and, after logging back in, the resolution has 
dropped again! Prefs/display shows 1280x854 @ 59Hz while Admin/display 
shows 1152x864.

And, as if this wasn't enough to confuse me, my xorg.conf has no modes 
line anymore!

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection


I'm also pretty confused as to why there are 2 separate display config 
panels in the first place.

Though this machine is not used for anything remotely 
graphics-intensive, I understand that I may have to install a proper 
video card to drive this panel. If that's the case--and it'll sort out 
these issues--I'm fine with that.


FWIW, I've been seeing an intermittent issue[2] (since upgrading to F10) 
where the display would be stretched vertically. I never did figure out 
how to resolve this permanently and wonder if it's the graphics driver.


[1] http://www.winischhofer.eu/linuxsisvga.shtml
[2] http://osdir.com/ml/fedora-list/2009-02/msg02280.html


$ lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 
661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter