leeappdalecom wrote:


I spent a couple of hours in the terminal window using vi to edit xorg.conf files and the like. I used the ncurses interface for setting up my devices I tried everything but couldn't get it to work.

creditcard wrote:

The difference though is I took more effort to solve the problems I have. Your lucky you even had a video, let alone being able to plug in a second monitor. I've installed Linux on machines where X blew up on my face. I had X blow on my face *on* an installed system. But I never really said this crap sucks and went back to using Windows exclusively. I figured out what went wrong and I fixed it. Because for me this is a learning expirence and I don't have very much to learn using Windows.

Now I can feel confident enough to go to job interview for "Windows Administrator", or "Linux Administrator". Or "J2EE Developer" or ".NET Developer".

Really the less people that discover Linux the more I can use my expirence to my advantage. So I don't know if all this "Linux needs to overtake Windows" is such a good thing. In the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

JChung2006 wrote:

Isn't the standard widescreen resolution 1440x900, not 1400x900?  Or is there even a standard for such things?

Rossj wrote:



Don't mean to ask a stupid question, but I will - you did try the "Screen and Graphics" dialog first didn't you?

creditcard wrote:

Give Grandma a Windows XP disc, a computer with no OS, and tell her to get it to a working state. It's going to be difficult I think for computer newbies to install and configure operating system regardless of which it is.

You are pretty much like Grandma, maybe a bit more technicial, but if all you have been using is Windows you have no clue how to get things done in Linux. Especially if you have been using Windows for a decade or more, it will take you years to reach parity in Linux. I've been using Linux nearly fulltime for 2 years and I am still a newb compared to many people, and I know much more about Windows then Linux still.

The difference though is I took more effort to solve the problems I have. Your lucky you even had a video, let alone being able to plug in a second monitor. I've installed Linux on machines where X blew up on my face. I had X blow on my face *on* an installed system. But I never really said this crap sucks and went back to using Windows exclusively. I figured out what went wrong and I fixed it. Because for me this is a learning expirence and I don't have very much to learn using Windows.

Now I can feel confident enough to go to job interview for "Windows Administrator", or "Linux Administrator". Or "J2EE Developer" or ".NET Developer".

Really the less people that discover Linux the more I can use my expirence to my advantage. So I don't know if all this "Linux needs to overtake Windows" is such a good thing. In the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

andokai wrote:

The existing Gnome dialogs were complete crap, they just let me set my resolution lower. I mean why are they there if they don't work?

Rossj wrote:



leeappdalecom wrote:  I spent a couple of hours in the terminal window using vi to edit xorg.conf files and the like. I used the ncurses interface for setting up my devices I tried everything but couldn't get it to work.

Don't mean to ask a stupid question, but I will - you did try the "Screen and Graphics" dialog first didn't you?

k2t0f12d wrote:

The GUI resolution tool is only a dialog and goes strictly by what has been made available in your config; it neither sets up nor rewrites your config for you. Other resolutions become available in either GNOME or KDE depending on what is written in your config, and the capabilities of your hardware.

andokai wrote:

I'm aware of how it works. It doesn't make it any more useful.

DigitalDud wrote:

Heh yeah I installed the new Ubuntu on a 3 year old Dell laptop (it has a broken CD drive, so I needed a network install OS).  Hardware all works including wireless except I get to choose between stable suspend/hibernatation and not crashing for more than 5 minutes.  Too bad I can't have both, or I could just figure out how to network install XP.

andokai wrote:

my point is, if you allow me the good fortune of one is that you do this in a conf file not in the dialog.

andokai wrote:

if your system isn't setup correctly at the beginning then you're sol if you want to fix things in a way that's familiar to windows and mac users.

leeappdalecom wrote:

My point is if Linux on the desktop is to be taken seriously people shouldn't have to spend hours in the terminal window messing around with config files.

elmer wrote:



leeappdalecom wrote: My point is if Linux on the desktop is to be taken seriously people shouldn't have to spend hours in the terminal window messing around with config files.

Unfortunately, the *nix community still see this as a plus.

To use a car analogy, they see it as a right of passage that every motorist should be a qualified mechanic.

However, most people just want to drive the car, and are prepared to tolerate the need to occasionally refuel it, but not much more.

DigitalDud wrote:



elmer wrote:  leeappdalecom wrote: My point is if Linux on the desktop is to be taken seriously people shouldn't have to spend hours in the terminal window messing around with config files. Unfortunately, the *nix community still see this as a plus. To use a car analogy, they see it as a right of passage that every motorist should be a qualified mechanic. However, most people just want to drive the car, and are prepared to tolerate the need to occasionally refuel it, but not much more.

It is a plus, thats the thing, being able to mess around with everything is what makes Linux useful in some spaces.  Now, attempting to shoehorn it into a desktop OS by hiding everything behind poorly designed wizards/druids/whatever is what sucks.

Xaero_Vincent wrote:


It also has a new task scheduler, so multitasking is a bit smoother because no single app can hog all the CPU resources.