[Tfug] Xorg 1.5

[Jim March]

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 6:41 PM, erich<erich1 at copper.net> wrote:
> OK,
>      I've been reading the upgrade guide on this version. It says
> that a xorg.conf file is no longer necessary. This is troubling
> to me. In light of this, how do you tell the software to change
> the scan rate? The fastest scan rate produces font size on many
> applications that I have to squint to read.
>
>     I'm happy with:
>
>            HorizSync    31.0 - 110.0
>            VertRefresh  55.0 - 160.0
>
>                                                    Erich

Two options:

1) There's a standard for monitors to report back to the video card
what they can cope with.  Assuming both monitor and video card are new
enough to support that standard, it's handled automatically.

2) For when it's not, or for when there are multiple possible options
(esp. CRTs instead of LCDs), each distro is supposed to supply a
utility for manually setting this stuff.  The same utility also
switches dual-head on and off, or lets you clone two monitors (useful
when doing projector displays to an audience) and screen rotation.

In Ubuntu Jaunty (and Gnome) this is in System>Preferences>Display

Some of the proprietary video drivers are using (optionally?) their
own control panel widget.  I'm running an Intel video card so I don't
know a lot about that.

Upshot: everything you used to need xorg.conf for is being GUI-ized.
And, at least with my hardware, it's working well.  I have a laptop
with an Intel 965 video chipset running drivers off the xorg-edgers
repo, internal screen is 1280x800, I often drive an external screen at
1280x1024 dual-head (running a browser on the laptop screen, watch
movies on the external screen).

It all works great - works even with Compiz on, although I usually
chop that for performance reasons.

Jim