"Macondo, I really thank you for the time you spend trying to help me, but please don't assume I'm SO lame"

Hehe, you have been given the answers to your questions and the tools to solve them and you have chosen not to read/follow instructions to the letter.

1. you had to reinstall only once, your installation is simple, as you stated before, you want woody and the 2.4 kernel, if you had followed the instructions in the article, you would be using Debian from the first day. Instead, you pick and choose and skip steps, with the end result you have a bad installation, Debian doesn't work correctly, and thus, more questions.

2. Debconf configures X, using the information you provide it with, The more detailed and especific, the more accurate it will be. If you had chosen the 'advanced' option as directed in the article, you would have seen that there is a section to choose the exact resolution you need. But no, you know more than the author Clinton de Young.

3. You were directed to install the following packages: x-window-system, discover, mdetect, and read-edid; there is a reason for this: to autodetect any troublesome piece of hardware. But...you know better. And that's allright, this is your prerrogative, but if you are not going to follow instructions, what is the purpose of us, giving it to you? It's simple common sense.

4. With respect to English not being your mother tongue, i got news for you, many of the people who write or ask for help here, are 'furriners', you are italian and i'm latin-american, your problem is not the language, but the bloated opinion you have of your knowledge, demonstrated by your refusal to follow simple instructions in matters such as is the installation of Debian. which you are not familiar with.

Capisci?

All this is demonstrated in the following excerpt from your post:


"I've read all the documentation you pointed out to me, and even more since I read also a couple of articles from the same author of the second link
and NO, I've not followed the step-by-step instruction just because I'm probably wrong but a desktop size problem didn't seem to me worth of another reinstallation (I'm at 5 now..)"

Good luck.

uhm, well, I really can't understand why you try so hard to argue with me O_o

1) who said debian doesn't work correctly? I've just an issue with graphical setting, and it's such a minor one that it didn't either deserve a complete reinstall. it's not that I'm the Choosen One or something like that and I don't need to follow instructions like for some reason you assumed. It's that I've read the instructions and simply I've decided that if it needs a complete reinstall it's not a priority. my priority is to find a way to set up a working network since woody cd does not contain support for my ethernet card, and so reinstalling wouldn't solve the problem as a matter of fact.
In addition to this, as dead parrot kindly pointed out, it was enough to just remove the 1280x check. the problem I was having was just that I was able to change resolution at will (changing default or by pressing ctrl+alt+ +/-) but I had a "virtual desktop" (windows terminology :P) of constant size and I didn't know how to resize it. now it seems this is an intentional behaviour, or something like that, I've removed the 1280 entry and I'm happy. what's wrong about it?

2) well the fact is, I ran that config MANY times, using advanced option (otherwise where should I have set the screen frequencies?) but it had nothing to do with what was my issue until I removed the 1280 check and cut out the entire problem.

3) see above

4) boy, let me tell you this: you are strange. you argue even on how someone is apologiseing.



now, just to make the point, I consider my graphical issue solved, but I'm still working on the ethernet one
I've tried in some way to download pkges with knoppix but it seems it's willing to do it only if it's installed on HD. the same thing emerged reading various knoppix related posts (even though they were talking about installing, not just downloading). atm I'm trying some alternate ways, then if I'll still be stuck, I'll go ask on the boards as suggested

PLEASE, once again, note that I'm not doing this because I have the Universal Knowledge in me, but because I try to solve my problems by myself before going bothering others (and that's the same reason I had to reinstall debian 4 times *before* posting on this board)

Whatever, i guess your pleads for help and all the posts going back and forth are a figment of my imagination.

ok, it's my turn now!

"I am right, you are wrong"

now that we both have accomplished our diplomatic tasks, why don't we stop this thing and start back from the beginning?

the situation has changed a little: since the kernel substitution thing was going to require to bother too many people (I successfully recompiled it but that's another story) I reverted back to dead parrot first suggestion and started from scratch with sarge (minimal inst). it recognized my eth card and everything went just fine, then I installed xwindow and wmaker (and icewm..)
same behaviour as before
at this point I'm not really sure it isn't meant to work like it
well anyway just removing the 1280 entry it works as I want it to so it's all right.

now I've just to sort out an error msg I get sometimes about an irq