Hi Paul, Tuesday, September 23, 2003, 9:25:42 AM, you wrote:
HF> On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 15:17:04 +0100 Derek Jennings HF> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: HF> <chops down an Oak> >> Hey calm down Lance. I was not saying you cannot control refresh rate >> in Linux. Merely that it is not as simple as just selecting a drop >> down box like in Windows. To get 32bit 1024x 768 resolution all you >> need do is add the lines >> HF> <gets out the wood chipper> >> derek >> HF> I think part of his point is it should be simpler. I agree with him. That's about the long and short of it, yes. Linux is clearly trying to make a push onto the corporate and retail desktop. And a lot of Linux backers are claiming these days that the ease-of-use and installation issues have pretty much been taken care of by the modern distributions and automated install routines. And to a large extent, this claim is clearly true. But here is a very basic configuration area where there is a rather large hole. Refresh rate is very basic for ergonomic computing. The desire of a great many people to run at as high a refresh rate as their hardware will allow is not going to go away. And people -- by and large -- are not going to take mini E.E. courses in order to configure their monitors to run at desired settings in Linux, especially given the fact that the wrong numbers on a mode line can silently trash the monitor. Some will indeed do that of course, but the OS isn't ever going to go mainstream that way. This is simply an incompleteness in setup and configuration, and a pretty glaring one considering the progress that has been made in other areas with respect to getting this puppy ready for the mainstream. (There are three things everyone wants to set almost immediately with regard to the visual interface: color depth, screen res., and vertical refresh rate -- Linux has the first two down pat and is missing the third, so it's very, very noticeable.) I have a very well-known monitor that has been out for a number of years. There are probably tens of thousands of people using the exact same model (Viewsonic PF790), and there would have to be at least hundreds if not thousands of Linux users using it. It's hard for me to believe there isn't a database somewhere in the Linux community where these settings are maintained, and I can just read and make the appropriate edit with some fair degree of confidence. But apparently that is the case. Sometimes it takes an outsider with a fresh viewpoint to notice things. This is very noticeable. <shrugs> Lance
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