Laptop related issues

[Guy Rouillier]

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 17:20:56 -0800
Rick Stevens <rstevens at vitalstream.com> wrote:

>Guy Rouillier wrote:
>> On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 13:40:02 -0800
>> Rick Stevens <rstevens at vitalstream.com> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>>> 2)Are there any issues w/ RH9 and/or FC-1 and XFree86 on WUXGA displays?
>>>>   Is this really a function of XFree86 and/or graphics drivers? 
>>>
>>>Depends on the graphics card on the laptop.  I generally try to stay
>>>with ATI video cards, not nVidia.  ATI has a better reputation as to
>>>putting their API into open source.  There's an open source nVidia
>>>driver, but it often doesn't work real well with their newer chipsets.
>>>My current Fujitsu C220 laptop has an ATI chipset running at 1400x1050.
>>>Works fine, lasts a long time under FC1, kernel 2.4.22-1.2174.nptl.
>> 
>> 
>> Rick, I got an eMachines M6805 with an AMD64 chip and ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility chip in it.  The only way I could get native 1280x800 was by installing 4.4.0 from XFree86.org, as 4.3 does not support the 9600 Mobility  Do you have any experience with that version?  While I have the native resolution (and a simultaneous CRT with independent resolution and refresh rate), I have issues with it (e.g., Gnome will only put the panel on the top of the laptop LCD; I can force it on the bottom by turning off Xinerama, but that corrupts %gconf.xml, and turning Xinerama back on yields no panel at all.)  This is using the binary from XFree86.org, which is for glib 2.2, while I have glib 2.3.  Do you think recompiling would help?
>
>My laptop us using an ATI Radeon IGP 340m and is using the standard
>vesa driver (I'm not sure which driver actuall works with the IGP and
>I don't need the acceleration, so I haven't toyed with any tweaked
>Radeon-specific drivers).  The systems at home have ATI Rage 128 and
>Radeon 7500 cards.
>
>As to the dual-desktop, the library may make a difference, but I can't
>speak to it for certain.  To be honest, I don't really play with the X
>stuff too much...I've got enough on my hands dealing with a ton of
>servers running in text mode.  :-/  (crooked grin)

Thanks, I'll give recompile a try.  While I'm an old (literally) command-line hack from DOS, Windows and OS/2, I'm still a relative newbie to Linux (about 4 years.)  So I do fall back on the GUI, especially to update the myriad rc files scattered about.

-- 
Guy Rouillier