I am using Fedora 10 and I was wondering "How do I change the screen resolution to one not listed in 'system-config-display'?".

Thanks
-Sam

The straightforward way to do this is to edit the entries in /etc/X11/xorg.conf

The resolution setting has to be compatible with your card, monitor, and the refresh rate settings. For better help, post your version of these sections, and tell us what you want to add/change:

An edit to /etc/X11/xorg.conf probably is the best way to get what you want. But, it may not be as easy as you might expect from pixellany's post. The most likely thing to confuse beginners is:

The "1600x1200" is not exactly a screen resolution. It is the name of a screen resolution. We can reasonably assume the screen resolution named by "1600x1200" is actually 1600 by 1200. But because "1600x1200" is a name, it only works if that name is defined somewhere that the X video driver can find.

There are several places it can look for the definitions of the names of screen resolutions. But if you aren't already getting access to the resolution you want, that makes it likely the driver can't find it.

To get maximum control, you can define screen resolutions directly in the xorg.conf file with modelines (see many other threads in LinuxQuestions for details).

Of course, Pixellany is correct that if you show us your current xorg.conf and tell us which modes you want to use, then we can give you more specific advice.

If would be nice to know what video card you have. you can tell us that by typing

then you can find out more information about what modes that video card can handle. No point setting it to a higher resolution than the card can handle.

Video Card:
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 7150M (rev a2)

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1280x800"
HorizSync 31.5 - 50.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 65.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "vesa"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Perhaps you'd have better luck using the nVidia driver since you seem to have a nVidia controller. Of course the nVidia drivers all contain a binary blob, so you loose some control of the code executed on your box. (You could try the FOSS nv driver, but, AFAIK, that driver doesn't support the newer nVidia cards.)

The simplest way to get the nVdia driver is to enable the RPM-fusion repository (sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/...ble.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfr...ble.noarch.rpm) and then do a yum install akmod-nvidia

Adding the RPM worked great, a lot easier than nVidia's website.
Thanks

I have a similar question. I'm also running Fedora 10 but on a Lenovo X200.

Here is the result of the "lspci | grep VGA" command:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Cantiga Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 07)

And my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is blank, null, non-existent .... which seems strange to me.

The X200 has a larger screen than the X61 that I had previously with Fedora 10, but I'm actually seeing less screen with everything appearing bigger than on the X61.

When I go to System -> Preferences -> Hardware -> Screen Resolution, it indicates that 1280 X 800 is selected...

Any help on how to improve this resolution would be appreciated!

Mark

Well, this thread was about nVida hardware, and you have an Intel chip-set.

The problem you have is probably related to an error in most of the later releases (by Intel) of the FOSS driver which fails, for some monitors, to properly read the monitor's supported modes. What you should try is:

1) Edit (as "root") the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change the video driver from intel to vesa. If the file doesn't exist, run system-config-display to see if one will be generated.

2) Reboot the X-server (<ctrl>-<alt>-<backspace>) and look in /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what modline settings were detected by the vesa driver.

3) Edit the xorg.conf file to include the modeline and resolution settings in the appropriate places. (If you don't know how or where, post here again -- or, better and more polite, start a new thread, and e-mail me with the link to the new thread -- and I'll post an example from my Intel system of what it looks like. I'd do it now, but I started this reply on my nVidia laptop, and it's tedious moving an incomplete reply to a different system.)

You might find this thread where gakusei had a problem similar to yours, and he found a simpler solution than the one I suggested above.

Oh! So sorry for going against protocol on the post! I've begun a new post that can be found here:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...4/#post3397740

Mark