Re: Pretty basic question

[Havoc Pennington <hp redhat com>]

On 5 Oct 1999, Jonathan H. Eisenman wrote:
> ...or so I think at least.  Probably a really stupid one to the rest of you. 
> Anyway, I just set up gnome on Red Hat 6.0 but I keep having this problem of
> the screen showing up big as hell.  The resolution must be less than 640x480
> (like 1/8 of that!).  I tried messing with the xf86config but no matter what I
> changed the setttings to, I got the same thing.  I am trying to run it on a
> Dell XPS-T 600 with a Diamond Viper 770D graphics card using the TNT2 chip and
> a Dell P990 monitor (19").  The Dell monitor is a dupe of the Sony CPD-420GS if
> that helps at all.  If anyone has a solution to this aggrevating situation,
> please reply and let me know.  Thanks!		
> 

This is a question about configuring X, so not technically GNOME-related.
Just don't blame it on us, we have enough bugs... ;-)

Anyway, if you look at your XF86Config (the file is /etc/X11/XF86Config),
you'll find something like this:

Section "Screen"
    Driver      "svga"
    Device      "Millennium II"
    Monitor     "Iiyama MT-9221,       VisionMasterPro"
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       8
        # Omit the Modes line for the "Generic VGA" device
        Modes       "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1152x864" "1280x1024" "1600x1200"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1600x1200" "640x480" "800x600" "1024x768" "1152x864" "1280x1024"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

This is in my XF86Config, the details will be different in yours. The
"Modes" are your resolutions. You need to rearrange them so the resolution
you want to use by default is at the front of the line; note that
1600x1200 is at the front of my "Modes" line for 16 bits per pixel (depth
16). (I never use the Depth 8 subsection).

You can also toggle resolutions while you're using X by pressing
Ctrl-Alt-+ and Ctrl-Alt--, where the + and - keys are the ones on the
numeric keypad.

If you want to use a resolution smaller than the largest one on the Modes
line, I would suggest removing the larger one from the line; otherwise you
will have a "virtual screen" larger than the real screen which is
annoying.

Another issue is the bit depth to use; if you use 8, you'll only have 256
colors and it will be ugly. Try to use 16. Run "xdpyinfo" in X to find out
your current bit depth.

There's a tool that ships with Red Hat called Xconfigurator that can often
do a lot of this stuff for you.

Havoc