Carl Hartung wrote:
Hi Istvan,
I really like this post of yours! ;-)
On Thursday 22 December 2005 06:13, Istvan Gabor wrote:
SUSE likes to "fix" things that work well.
I think it is a genetic trait. [snipped]
In earlier versions (9.0, 9.1, 9.2 and 9.3) Yast/sax2 graphic card setup was pretty straightforward.
Before SuSE r7 or so, it was possible to select 1st resolution, then 2nd, 3rd, etc. I started with 800x, then 1024x then 1280x, then 640x. This was for a box that traveled between sites and used various monitors. Most would read 800x. Ctrl-Alt-Keypad* moved from 1st choice through 2nd, to 3rd, then returned to 1st. It looped. Ctrl-Alt-Keypad- jumped from 1st back to last choice (here 600x). That was very handy, and not difficult for newbies to set. Later "improvements" dropped down to auto selection of the highest allowable resolution as 1st choice. That caused me no end of troubles, but forced me to learn about editing XF86Config to put the resolution choices in the order I wanted. It still looped. as before. This 9.2 box has two monitors (NON-xinerama) using the latter method. CAD work on one screen at highest resolution; construction site photo display on the other at whatever lower resolution makes for best viewing. Firefox knows how to change text sizes, but that doesn't help if the web page is a graphic. Only changing the resolution works.
The earlier implementation was ingenious and an artful piece of engineering... flexible enough to make those with more complex requirements happy but straightforward and intuitive enough to not badly trip up newcomers.
<snippage>
2. How can I set these resolutions: 1024x768 an 640x480 so that ctrl-alt-+/- would result in the change.
I don't use that feature and haven't set it up, so I'll watch for answers with you. Great post! IMHO, this particular design change should be reversed in future releases.
There have been problems with Xorg losing dual screen smarts in 10.0. We pulled one newbie off his 10.0 and put him back on 9.3 last month. We could configure things at our meeting place, but couldn't make it easy for him to go home and easily reconfigure for his different (large, heavy) monitors. He wasn't ready to edit config files on his own. It is discouraging when easy-to-start gets in the way of easy-to-use.