Knoppix 5.1 - setting low video resolution
 

Hi All

Just run Knoppix V 5.1 CD (2007 01 04)

It setup my video display to 800x600 but as I am using a Dell 2407WFP/Sapphire Radeon 9600 AGP this needs to be set at 1920x1200.

I tried to change the video setting but the only option from the pull-down menu is 800x600.

How do I correct this please?

Any suggestions/help would be appreciated.

Once knoppix is booted up, you should be able to open a root terminal and type dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg since it's based on Debian (note I haven't tried this).

Alternatively, you can try the cheatcode knoppix screen=1920x1200. You might also need the hsync and vsync cheat codes, I don't know.

You might also want to add depth:

Thanks for replying pljvaldez.

The cheatcode you provided was not recognized so didn't work.

I tried to log into the root terminal and needed to put in my password which I couldn't because I hadn't set one up!

Very frustrating trying to setup/use Linux when I have a very fast/stable/lean/tweaked version of WinME.

I know I will need to 'upgrade' from WinME at some stage and would much prefer to use a Linux distro rather than Winxp/Vista but it is not looking good so far after trying a number of distos including Puppy,Ubuntu,Kubuntu,SimplyMepis and now Knoppix.

Why doesn't Knoppix already know I am using 1920x1200?

If I get passed this 'problem' what are the chances that Knoppix will be able to detect my printer, on board sound,Internet connection etc. at all or correctly?

Any more suggestions please.

Thanks for your help.

Did you try just opening a root terminal from the knoppix menu?

You can try hitting F2 or F3 at the boot prompt to see other cheatcodes. I suspect one problem might be the ATI card requires the proprietary ATI drivers. Not sure which distros include this by default. It's also possible that you need to do some additional configuration to the xorg.conf file to make that resolution work. See this thread.

And since you seem new to linux, you may be interested to know that not all hardware is perfectly supported (since not all vendors will give open source developers help). check the HCL at the top of the page here for each component of your system. Kinda like how you can stick your ATI Radeon in a Windows 98 box and it won't know what to do with it. You'll be lucky to get 800x600 until you install the drivers. If you didn't have one, you'd be SOL. Same for linux, you just have to find the right drivers to load...

Hi pljvaldez.

If I am booting/using a live CD how/where would the appropriate Linux ATI driver be stored?

Would I need to store the driver on say a USB Flash drive and 'load' it each time I use Knoppix?

I know that it would be best to install Linux on my HDD but until I am happy that a distro basically works ok on my computer I am reluctant to install it that way.

Is there some way to fine tune the distro to include appropriate drivers before burning the ISO image to CD?

Yes, it is called remastering. I've never done it myself so I don't know how hard it is to do.

As to where the appropriate drivers are, they are probably online. Not sure if you can build them and then store them on a USB drive or not. Again, I only use liveCD's for recovery. Most of the time I don't even boot the graphical interface.

You should be able to find a liveCD that contains the radeon driver (for that matter, it might already be loaded -- type lsmod |grep radeon and lsmod |grep ati to see what driver is loaded by default. I suspect your problem is really the monitor settings in xorg.conf....

Hi again pljvaldez. Thanks for the links. I will check them out.

Thinking this through, would it be possible to store a Linux distro on an external USB HDD and boot into Linux when required.

I could then change settings and add drivers etc which would be stored on the external HDD and cut out the (small) risk of Linux messing up my WinME setup.

My bios allows me to boot from USB but not sure how to setup Linux so it will boot from a USB HDD.

Any suggestions as to how I should proceed or the best place to look for info?

I appreciate all your help.