A strategic question (continued)

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2006-01-31 03:41, Jozef Baum <jozef.baum at telenet.be> wrote:
> Many thanks to everyone who answered my previous e-mail about this subject
> on this list or by private e-mail.
>
> As some of you suggested, I have installed PC-BSD (http://www.pcbsd.com/). I
> am sure a Unix guru would not like to install FreeBSD in this way, as it
> doesn't offer many choices. But it is just wonderful for a Unix newbie like
> me. At the end of the installation, the GUI, the cable Internet connection,
> and even the sound system worked fine. Some configuration still needs to be
> done (printing and German keyboard). But now at least I have a system I can
> use right away to do some usefull work with, and to further explore.
>
> I will try to configure the printing myself before perhaps eventually asking
> some specific questions about it here.
>
> I found an interesting explanation about the configuration of the German
> keyboard, so if some other German speaking newbie asks about it:
>
> http://user.cs.tu-berlin.de/~eserte/FreeBSD/doc/umlaute/umlaute.html
>
> Giorgos Keramidas asked me:
> > Can you explain *how* you configured your X11 desktop?
>
> Like explained in the handbook. First I created an xorg.conf.new
> configuration skeleton file with
>
> # Xorg -configure
>
> Then I tested this configuration with
>
> # Xorg -config xorg.conf.new
>
> The result was a "Mode not supported" message on the display screen
> until I found out the HorizSync and VertRefresh values to write in the
> Section "Monitor" which were supported, and which were much narrower
> than the hardware manufacturers specifications.

That's probably a bug in the configuration file generated by Xorg and,
quite possibly, a bug in the Handbook section.  Most modern monitors and
video adapters work without any HorizSync or VertRefresh line in
`xorg.conf'.  This forces the X11 servers to query the hardware for the
supported refresh ranges, and I've found that it tends to be much easier
to get things right this way :)

> The display adapter is an nVidia GeForce4 MX with integrated GPU (which uses
> 64 MB of the system's 512 MB physical working memory). The LCD monitor is a
> Proview 780.

I'm using an ATI on the laptop used to type this message.  The file
/var/log/Xorg.0.log lists it as:

    ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]

The `xorg.conf' file has commented out entries for HorizSync and
VertRefresh, but this doesn't keep things from working.

    Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"

        # Uncomment if you don't want to default to DDC:
        #HorizSync    31.5 - 79.0
        #VertRefresh  50.0 - 70.0
    EndSection

You may find it easier to comment out these lines from xorg.conf, start
X11 and then tune the best refresh ranges later, after you get things
working fine :)