Hello,

I've installed Slackware on an old 200 Mhz machine which contains a Matrox Millenium graphics card (PCI, 8Mb) which is "talking" to an Iiyama MF8617E monitor (17")

However when I start an X windows session (KDE) the display does not fill the monitor and there are large areas of unused screen all round the display (in other words the screen appears to have been shrunk)

Sadly I had a similar problem when I tried Suse 7.1 on this box which I managed to fix via Suse config. However I've tried all sorts of things in Slackware and I can't get it looking right.

If it helps then I've checked the settings in the KDE control panel and this is showing the correct VGA card and monitor.

So if anyone can point me in the right direction I'd be most grateful !

Try changing the resolution from 1024*768 to 800*600

Hello,

Thanks for the suggestion but that didn't make things any better (if anything it was worse If it's helps my explanation then my screen currently looks a little like this:

|---------------------------------------------|
| |
| |--------------------------------------- |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
| |--------------------------------------| |
| |
|---------------------------------------------|

Where the inner box is the amount of the monitor that my X session is using. I've tried various combinations of desktop resolution, frequency etc. etc. but I just can;t get X to use the whole of the available monitor space.....

Any further info gratefully received.

Bugger it !

The screen doesn;t look anything like my last post as posting the reply caused it to remove all the spaces in my carefully created boxes....

So I'll try again where "x" marks the monitor space being used

|-----------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|--|xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|--|
|-----------------------------------------|
|-----------------------------------------|

Oh bollox...

Looks like the font on the board is not the same as the font used when tryping up a message..... Hopefully you'll get the idea.

Lol. I have been having that problem since I started with Slackware almost 6 months ago. I just deal with it. But, if there is a way to fix, it, I am all for it!

Often problems like this are to do with the fact that X Window pretty much always uses the highest frequency that both your monitor and video card can deal with at your chosen resolution. The solution, if you are not dual booting, is usually just a matter of adjusting the geometry settings on the monitor itself, usually with buttons on the front or knobs which can be almost anywhere on the monitor. This is sometimes fine even if you are dual booting, since many monitors store different sets of geometry settings for every different frequency/resolution combination. So if you run Windows at one frequency and resolution, and you run X Window at a different frequency and resolution, then the monitor can be adjusted individually for each gui and they won't interfere with each other.

However, some monitors don't have the ability to store different sets of geometry settings. Also, the monitor's adjustments may not be broad enough to work correctly with every frequency and resolution it is capable of (although this is not very likely with a monitor less then 6 or 7 years old). If one of these things is the case for you, or there is another reason you are unable to adjust the monitor's geometry to match what X Window is displaying, then you can make adjustments to the way the X Window works with the program xvidtune. You should be aware, however, that setting xvidtune incorrectly can possibly damage your monitor in the same way that setting XF86Config frequency/resolution settings incorrectly can damage your monitor. You will not normally have a problem as long as you make your adjustments in small increments until you get what you want.

Thanks! That worked great! It's not a problem for me, I don't dual boot!