Fedora on Wide screen laptops

[Arunvijai_4]

Hello All,

I have a wide screen laptop (Inspiron 700m) and just installed Fedora core 5 with dual boot configuration.

Problem :- Display is too small, it is not scaled to full screen (12.1"). Does any body ever installed and configured successfully video settings and make use of wide screen in Linux ??

Thanks,
Arun

[Vipulinux]

Hi

have u thought of trying FC 3.

Fedora 3 seems very stable and reliable on laptop's ..have'nt tried fc 5 on laptops on desktop it works gr8..

cheers

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Arun,

Welcome to Linuxland.

You might find using a production Fedora release might work out better. FC 5 is stil in late testing.

FC4 is considered somewhat mixed and FC3 is considered stable and well supported.

On menu, choose system setting(second word varies release to release) display

In there, you will see generic LCD settings. You should be able to change your screen resolution to something better for your screen in there.

To change settings, click the little triangle.

That laptop should work well with Fedora.

SEP

[Arunvijai_4]

Hello,

Hi,

Fedora core 5 is latest release and thought of give a try though. http://fedoranews.org/cms/node/438

It was released on March 20th 2006.

I tried few stuffs given in a link ( http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=22526)
and made progress upto 3/4 of the screen :-).

SEP, I tried changing display settings, no use.

-Arun

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Arun,

You can sometimes trick FC by hooking up a monitor to the laptop monitor connector and changing the display settings there.

I'd also suggest the latest Ubuntu production release. They are very good with their hardware and display settings support.

SEP

[Huc_1]

I had some problem's on fedora core 5 install

I had to use console mode to get all the updates using yum, before the situation got any better I could the use the command

# setup

from console to do my X display setup

mabe this can help you out ?

Jean-Pierre

[Arunvijai_4]

Hello,

SEP: I dont have a monitor handy at home. I got the Ubuntu CDs (Live & Install) with me, same problem exists there. Thats why i opted for FC5 .

Jean-Pierre: Thanks, I will try that as well.

-Arun

[Pau Garcia i Quiles]

It's easy to fix, but you will need to manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

1. Find out which is the native resolution for your screen (for example, for my 15.4'' laptop it's 1280x800)

2. Install the "videogen" utility or use an online modelines calculator (for instance http://zaph.com/Modeline/ but you can google and find lots more). Tell the modeline calculator the resolution, refresh rate, etc for your screen and you'll get a line like this:
Modeline "1280x800@60" 83.91 1280 1312 1624 1656 800 816 824 841

3. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add that line to the "Monitor" section for your screen. For instance, mine is like this:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
HorizSync 28-64
VertRefresh 43-60
Modeline "1280x800@60" 83.91 1280 1312 1624 1656 800 816 824 841
EndSection

4. Now go to the "Screen" section, to the subsection for the color depth you want to use and add the resolution for the new modeline. Mine is like this:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "NVIDIA Corporation NV40M? [GeForce Go 6200]"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 16
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x800"
EndSubSection

Restart X.org and you are done.

[Steven E. Protter]

I like the last answer here Arun.

Also, what does Dell say about this? They may actually provide a solution that works on RH or FC.

The Linux group in the business division are very well trained and bright at Dell support.

SEP

[Andrew Cowan]

I am using Suse Linux 10 on my Compaq v4000 and Sax2 enabled me to setup my screen at the full resolution with very little effort.

My advise is that Suse seems the best bet for laptops as it supports more devices than the other distros. I've even got my wireless LAN running with WPA2 , whereas the best I could get with Fedora was WEP.