No 1440x900?
 

How can I get 1440x900 for Debian 4.0 (not on the list of available resolutions). I need it for my LG L194WTX (i use ATI all in Wonder). In Windows 2000 it works perfect. How can I make it work in Linux? (LG & ATI websites don't have linux drivers). Thanks

I'm sorry my friend, you're probably not looking for the right thing. LG might not "have" the right driver - they're hardware people, but ATi almost definitely do.

It's gonna probably be a case of just getting it installed i.e. finding where it is and then following the install instructions.

I can't offer any directions on the actual install, as I've never had an ATi card/chip (luckily), always nvidia.

There should be a file in your system, called /etc/apt/sources.list. Mine looks like this
Yours will be different, although the structure will be the same. The important one will be the multimedia entry as I suspect that thats where the ATi graphics driver will be - again, you'll need to work out the exact entry - mine shows "SID" which is debian unstable - I think your one, debian 4 is "etch".

If your /etc/apt/sources.list file has the entry already then you might just have to uncomment (remove the # from in front of the address entry part).

Theres some instructions on getting this done here I'm presuming that it'll be the same for you.

then it should just be a case of selecting the correct resolution that you want (I can't use the correct one without the nvidia driver either - so I always have to install it to get the 1600x1200 that I use).

HTH

regards

John

p.s. Oh and the link to the install instructions was either the 2nd or 3rd in a search for "debian etch ati driver" - remember, google is your friend.

That Ati All-in-Wonder probably does NOT have an official Ati driver available for Linux. The original poster seems to have looked for it first before asking here, and Ati doesn't have official Linux drivers for older video cards.

That said, the open source "ati" driver might be able to handle the video output part of the All-in-Wonder (but not the other stuff). All-in-Wonders being more complex than just a video card, it's not surprising that open source Linux developers never reverse-engineered them as well as Ati's normal video cards.

There's a user friendly way to reconfigure the X-server in Debian, but frankly I'm not too familiar with it since I always just manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. So, I'll explain how to do it the way I'm used to.

First, switch to text mode with control-alt-F2. Login as "root".

Second, edit the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf with the command:

pico /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This assumes you want to use the text editor named "pico". This is an adequate text editor for a newbie because it's pretty easy to use. I personally use "vi", out of habit, but it has a weird way of doing things. Anyway, you'll want to make the following changes:

The first, look for the "Device" section. It will have a line that looks something like this:

Driver "ati"

If it has something other than "ati", then replace it with "ati".

Then test the changes. You do this by first switching to a graphics mode via ctrl-alt-F7. Then press ctrl-alt-backspace to reset the X-server. One of two things will happen. Either:

a)The "ati" driver will work, and you'll see a graphical login screen.

or

b)The "ati" driver will fail, and you'll see either a blank screen or text mode login. If you see a blank screen, then it's possible the Ati card has gotten seriously confused and the easiest way to get everything back on track is to reboot into single user mode and change the driver back to what it was before.

After this, you can try out editing in the new resolution. Go back to the ctrl-alt-F2 text mode screen where you're logged on as root. Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf again. This time, you'll scroll down almost to the bottom of the file to add in your desired resolution.

In the "Screen" section near the bottom, you'll see a lot of lines listing resolutions like this:

SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection

Simply add in "1440x900" into each of the "Modes" lines.

After making these changes, use ctrl-alt-F7 and ctrl-alt-backspace to test the changes.

If these don't work, you can try changing the video driver to "vesa", the name of the generic video driver in Linux. The "vesa" driver is surprisingly capable, although it might not be able to handle non-standard resolutions like 1440x900.