[UFO Chicago] LCDs and Linux

[Jordan Bettis]

On Sat, Aug 04, 2001 at 12:46:29AM -0500, Larry Garfield wrote:
> Does anyone have any experience with LCD monitors under Linux?  Are
> there any gotchas that I need to keep in mind?  My assumption is that
> they're either as cranky as video cards or as easy as keyboards, but I
> don't know which. :-)

I have a compaq laptop running Debian GNU/Linux. Compaq was nice enough to
provide the specs for it so I just set the refresh rates to what they said
I should set them to, but as I understand, "wrong" values for those two 
things ether shouldn't affect it at all, or shouldn't hurt it, depending
on who you ask. 

The Debian xconfigurator script managed to probe my video adapter, confirm
for me that it is the same one Compaq said it was, inform me that it needed
an accelerated server (SVGA_SV), and proceed to write a XF86Config that
the server could not read.

All in all, it took me about three hours of reading docs and toying around
with my config before I got it to work. I don't know if that's because it
is a LCD, because it needed a special server, or just because the script
I was trying to use was on crack. I don't know if it would have been any
easier or not if I didn't have my computer's specs.

I'd have to go with the video cards, we are talking about X here ;-).

BTW: On the subject of keyboards, I have a pretty wicked .xinitrc full
of xmodmaps, but that's primarily because I'm an emacs user.

-- 
Jordan Bettis <http://www.hafd.org/~jordanb/>
When I do this, some people think it's because I want my ego to be fed. Of 
course, it's not like I'm asking you to call it Stallmanix.
				-- Richard Stallman on GNU/Linux