Re: Why is setting up X so arcane?
On Thu, Jun 28, 2001 at 01:45:31PM +0100, Nikki Locke wrote:
> I have a machine here I would like to run X on. I am not sure of the
> specs of the VGA card, and have no manuals for it. I think I have a
> manual for the monitor (it has no manufacturer marked on it, but I have
> found a single sheet of paper which has a picture on it that looks
> vaguely like the front on my monitor).
You must know what kind of vga card you have. If you cannot make it
clear to xfree86 what type of chip it is to be dealing with, how can it
know what registers to program on the chip?
You need to know only the monitor's horizontal and vertical scan frequency
maximum and minimum values. Together with the vga card's max dotclock
and available memory, these determine the screen resolutions that are
possible.
> How on earth am I supposed to set up X?
Ancient rites must be performed, it's called rtfm. But unlike setting
up scsi, there's no live animals involved.
> Why is it so difficult? I can install Microsoft Windows (spit), and it
> will find out for itself what card and monitor I have, and set itself
> up accordingly. Why isn't there a program to do the same thing with X?
No it doesn't. If you install windows 95, it puts you in 640x480x16 IIRC.
Unless your vga card is so bloody ancient that they included a driver
on the cd. You have to tune it yourself afterwards, by installing
the correct driver for your card and monitor, and setting these up to
your needs. Surely you must know enough details about your hardware,
or you would not be able to choose and install a driver in windows.
I'm sick and tired of hearing "but it's so easy in windows". If you only
knew how many windows users I have given a monitor upgrade, simply by
pressing a few buttons on the bottom of the monitor, and making the 2"
black frame that surronds their desktop disappear. Sheer magic.
If you want a windows-like linux, by all means install suse or mandrake.
They (especially suse) put a lot of effort in xfree86 installers.
But you'll miss all the fun of understanding how it works and what's
really going on. IMHO that's a big part of what linux is about.
> I have experimented as best I can, and I have got an X display. It is a
> 640 x 480 window on a larger desktop, and is really difficult to use.
> If I reboot into Windows NT, the thing displays 1024 x 768 quite
> happily.
>
> I have studied the stderr output of xinit, and it says
> (--) VGA16: clocks: 25.17 28.32 28.32 28.32
> (--) VGA16: Maximum allowed dot-clock: 90.000 MHz
> (**) VGA16: Mode "640x480": mode clock = 25.175, clock used = 25.170
> (--) VGA16: There is no defined dot-clock matching mode "800x600"
> (--) VGA16: Removing mode "800x600" from list of valid modes.
> (--) VGA16: There is no defined dot-clock matching mode "1024x768"
> (--) VGA16: Removing mode "1024x768" from list of valid modes.
> (**) VGA16: Virtual resolution set to 800x600
>
> Where do I go from here?
Go read the X-files at http://xfree86.org.
Cheers,
Joost
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