Dell Inspiron 8600 resolution settings
 

Hey,
Recentley I received a Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop. It has a WUXGA 15.4 screen and a Gforce fx5200 (64 meg) video card. I am trying to set the resolution to 1900x1200, however whenever I do the icons disappear off the top of the screen and the task/start bar at the bottom of the screen disappears, and all the fonts become very fuzzy to read. I am running SuSe 9.1 and a dual boot to Win XP. Could someone please help me with this issue?

Thanks

Mathew

Use SAX2 and try to choose an appropriate LCD and refresh rate.

What's happening is that the modelines for the LCD screen are causing the chipset to think that it's displaying within the boundaries when it isn't. Also, double-check the max resolution for your LCD. I thought my Dell C640 was a 1240x1024 whatever, and turns out it was 1500x1040, which corrected problems that I had with screen size, fuzziness and a flashing row of pixels at the bottom when I set it correctly.

Inspirion 8600 SuSe 9.1 resolutuion
 

First of all thanks for your help. I tried using SAX2 as well as YaST to change the resolution and refresh rate of my lcd. I did call Dell and they told me I have 15.4 inch WUXGA widescreen with a max resolution of 1920x1200. YaST/SAX2 both offered the same option to change the refresh rate. 1900x1200 was not available. I am using the vesa as the brand as for the resolution settings I am still stuck.

You might need to create your own entry for that monitor size then...

Do a Google/Linux search on "modelines" and get yourself a good FAQ and suggestions page. Then try experimenting.

Unless you get the size right, the fonts will continue to look crappy (unless you choose one of the sizes that is the next step-down from that higher resolution...)

You'll need to get familiar with using a text editor like VI as well.

Loook at this guys xconfig file

http://www.x-a.be/inspiron/XF86config

Specifically the modeline part... should work for you as well...

Check out:

http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/dell.html

For others with the 8600 and the nvidia card (I used this to get the 1680x1050 modelines for my 8500)