The only display mode that is bearable on my laptop is 1024x768x16
but in this mode the text is too small to read. the icons are too small to see. it's all to small. I tried reinstalling and increasing the dpi settings but this had absolutely no effect on the outcome of the install. How can I make this a bit easier on the eyes? Is there a setting somewhere for the font sizes and icon sizes?
Thanks

What Window/Desktop Manager are you using?

Ditto dxqcanada's question. The issue is that you have multiple X apps and window managers having their own separate font configurations. Typically, each window manager has its own defaults for fonts that you have to find and configure, and then you have individual X applications that may or may not use those window manager font configuration settings for fonts. As far as I know, the Firefox browser is an example of this. The end result of this is that you have to configure the fonts twice, once for the window manager (GNOME or KDE, etc.) and again for individually heavily used apps like Firefox and Emacs.

bgoodr

Oops! Forgive me for the lack of detail. I usually try to do a little better than that.

As far as I know DSL only comes packaged with fluxbox and JWM. The reason I did not specify is because I have experimented with both and found no means of making adjustments. I can't seem to find it now but I found a site on google earlier describing how to increase the font size with JWM and I followed it but the outcome was no different than what I had to begin with. I was playing around with it and discovered " IconView" but when I try to edit one it tells me it is unable to load. So far I have learned that this distro is not suitable enough for me. That's OK though. There are plenty more to try and the disc is sure to come in handy.
If you still wish to help me though I am all ears and willing to learn. It just isn't necessary anymore.
Thank you both for your time and help

I have not used Fluxbox nor JWM ... but there should be some rc file in your home directory.
example .jwmrc or .fluxboxrc