I'm putting this in the Newbie forum because I feel very silly asking an obvious question like this. But I didn't find it answered anywhere else, so...

I've got SuSE 8.1 installed, and much as I love running with a high resolution, I find I have to switch down because everything comes up too small to read.

All I want to do is change my screen resolution. It seems so simple, but Linux is fighting me all the way.

Now, I know about ctrl/+ etc to change the resolution on the fly, and I know about the Sax utility.

Ctrl/+ is great, but only changes the resolution, not the desktop size, so it leaves me with a scrolly desktop, which I have to say I really hate. (Also, I'm not sure that it keeps the setting when I log out).

Sax looks like it's supposed to be the program to use, but it doesn't seem to want to let me actually change anything. I can add new resolutions to my list (which is great, but doesn't solve the problem), but I can't actually pick a new resolution. It does let me change my colour depth... but I don't need to do that.

Now I know all this can be dealt with by fiddling with various config files, but that's why I've posted in Newbie - I don't know them, and right now I don't want to know them; this is something that ought to be easy to do for a novice. I don't have time right now to learn them, and in any case, SuSE will probably override them (it did last time I tried that tactic instead of using YaST).

So can anyone please tell me what I've missed, and why it isn't blindingly obvious.

Thanks

You could edit the following file:

/etc/X11/XF86Config (do make a copy first so you can always go back to your working version!).

Look for:

Section "Screen"
DefaultDepth <number>

Look for the Depth <number>, where number = number you found above.

SubSection "Display"
Depth <number>
Modes "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"

The Modes line below it shows the resolutions you can display, the first resolution ("1400x1050") is the one you start with after startx (or after reboot if you choose for that). Add/change the resolution you want to start with.

If you don't supply a virtual size, the first resolution found in the Modes line will be your virtual window size.

sax2 can do this for you with a GUI interface. Don't forget to import the current config file if you do want to use sax2, otherwise you might start from scratch and loose the manually edited options.

Hi druuna,

Thanks for the answer. You're right of course - I wasn't using Sax properly; I was assuming it would let me pick a default resolution other than the highest enabled.

Once I'd seen your reply, I tried unchecking the higher resolutions that I didn't want, and it all worked out. It does mean I can't switch up so easily, but at least I can read the text on my screen now!

Anyway, thanks again.