X server strangeness on iMac G5
Hi All,
I installed Debian 7.4 PPC on my iMacG5. Here is list of things that I observed
in case it helps anyone.
Desktop had black background on bottom 1/2 of screen. Windows seemed to not
be effected and would open over the black part of the screen. However, I opened
emacs and noticed that if you maximized the window, the text did not appear over
the bottom part of the window, but if you dragged the bottom corner to make the
window larger, it did work normally.
Tried Xfce desktop. This worked normally. This surprised me, as I thought it
was an X problem.
External monitor would not come on. xrandr seemed to ignore any attempts
to configure the external monitor. I finally found that if I told xrandr to turn
off the TV output on the iMac, then I was able to configure the external monitor
with --output VGA-1 --mode 1280x1024 and it came on.
I installed Lxde. It produced the same black background on the bottom 1/2 of
the screen as the Debian default (which I think is gnome or gnome-based?).
I installed openbox. It worked normally, like Xfce4.
I also installed Mintppc and had the same problems with their desktop, which
is Lxde-based. So back to Debian.
Right now, I just have a script run in Startup Applications that turns off TV-1
output and sets the mode for the external 19 incher and it all works, except
that I can not assign the iMac built-in monitor as primary. I have tried this
both on DebianPPC and MintPPC and same result.
So, that's my info. Hope it helps someone with an iMac G5.
-- Jim
that I ran was that the desktop, using the default desktop manager, had a
black background on about the bottom 1/3 of the monitor, but windows seemed
to open over the black. However, on Emacs, the bottom part of the window
had no text, but scrolling down showed that it really was there. A friend suggested
trying a different desktop manager, so I tried Xfce4, and everything worked OK
on the iMac's built in monitor, but I could not get the external monitor to come up.
If found that xrandr was mostly ignoring any arguments I gave it and not performing some config changes, that the external monitor would
not "come up" until I shut off the TV output (S video). So, I would have to
tell xrandr to shut off the TV output and then the external would come up
and report bad video timing like 12hz referesh rate. So, I had to manually
assign the 1280x1024 mode.
In the meantime, I was impressed with MintPPC on my G4 Powerbook, so
I decided to try that just on the chance that it might solve the X problems.
Mintppc came up with the bottom part of the
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