An observation about "it doesn't work on Debian but it works on Red Hat..."
 

I do not wish to resuscitate the properly-closed thread that gave rise to this observation, but I do wish to make an observation that might be useful.

The original question was "my monitor resolution worked on Red Hat and etc... but it doesn't work on Debian."

The suggestion was "install something else." Throwing out the entire baby with the bathwater.

To slightly-alter the text of a bad movie, "Get to the source, Luke!" And in this case I don't necessarily mean "source code," but "the source of the problem." In the case of a display-resolution issue, the source is either XFree86 or XOrg ... the software package which runs GUI displays, and which is undoubtedly the same across all these distributions!

"Distributions" are mostly packaging. A nice logo, a simple maintenance process, and a chosen collection of software packages with various easy means to configure them. The differences between the various distributions lie mostly in three of these four things... all of them using (for the most part) the same underlying software. As a result, distributions are a lot like cars: for all their visible differences, the underlying technology is very similar.

To solve a problem, therefore, it is imperative that you try to first understand it. Form a theory of what might be causing the behavior that you are seeing, then research (i.e. right here on this site) what might be causing it .. and search for what other people who might have encountered the same problem before you did. What they asked, and what responses they were given.

Without this approach (and it takes practice!), you're shooting in the dark .. and you're probably doing a lot more work than you need to, perhaps without ever solving the problem.

Always remember this: unlike Microsoft Windows, Linux is a loosely coupled system. The system behavior that you interact with every day is provided by a collection of interacting subsystems, not a "single system image." The effects of this architecture are visible in and among all Linux distros.

As an add on to this observation, just beacuse it works in one distro soes not mean that it should work in another. Red Hat, to use your example, has pretty good hardware detection (Anaconda) and Debian doesn't have this. Red Hat is designed to do this sort of thing for you whereas Debian isn't. If you want a distro to take out all the hard work, you need to choose it wisely.

I'm agreeing with you, by the way ;)

Yes, I see that. :)

Hardware-detection is definitely one of the areas where distros differ from one another. And sometimes their solutions are somewhat distro-specific because the distro designers spend a lot of time trying to anticipate hardware-problems (so you don't have to). They know what they have chosen to package.

I would encourage everyone who works with Linux to, yes, first spend time in the "baby crib" of relying upon what the distro-writer has done "without understanding it," but ... then start poking around (carefully!) behind the scenes. Use this web-site for the tremendous resource that it is. Log-on as a non-root user and explore the many configuration files in "/etc." Look for threads and follow them, then try to relate them to your system. As long as you're non-root you can pretty much do this with impunity because the system won't allow you to make changes to the files that you see.

You have a complete operating-system at your fingertips. Make the most of it! :D