Ugh, I hate top-posting! lol
I'm thinking that if the machine is only 800 Mhz then memory is a serious issue. Tony, can you upgrade your RAM to at least 512, assuming you don't have that already? Personal opinion, that's step one.
Mark
--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, Roy <linuxcanuck@...> wrote:
>
> The issue that you are having in Lenny not changing screen size is because
> you likely are running a plain vanilla vga display driver. To get higher res
> you will probably need the proper driver. Open a terminal and type lshw and
> scroll back to the section *-display and tell us what it says. You can
> highlight and copy and paste (not the whole thing, just that section). Maybe
> somebody with that specific graphics card can help you.
>
> Debian is a great distribution, but it is not the best for working with
> proprietary hardware issues. It is well known for supporting free drivers,
> and proud of the fact that it does not use any proprietary codecs or
> drivers. Things are going to get worse as they will be removing proprietary
> binary blobs from the kernel. You need to either learn to go with it or
> choose another distribution.
>
> A good alternative distribution to try would be PCLinuxOS with a lightweight
> desktop such as LXDE or Openbox. Crunchbang is also worth a look. Lubuntu is
> a great lightweight Ubuntu derivative. Distrowatch is the place to go to
> download. You will find that RAM is your biggest limiting factor in choosing
> a lightweight distribution. How much do you have?
>
> Roy
>
> Using Kubuntu 10.10, 64-bit
> Location: Canada
>
>
> On 19 January 2011 16:41, tony mitchell <greenstar@...> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> > I've been given a nice laptop, a Sony Vaio about 800Mhz. I wanted to
> > install linux, and went through a lot of hassle getting a version to work.
> > Many wouldn't boot from CD, Antix wouldn't mount CD or flash drive, Puppy
> > was lightning fast and fantastic but wouldn't complete install. Ubuntu is
> > too slow. After burning a spool of CD's I tried Debian 5.0 Lenny, which
> > passed with flying colours, easy install, fast and all working ...... except
> > it gives me 800*600 screen res, and preferences gives no option to increase
> > to 1024 by 768, so have a ten inch desktop on a 14 inch screen. Silly
> > really.
> >
> > I have googled for a fix. Not joking, this has been an issue for about four
> > years. There's pages of discussion forums listed, all agree no choice in
> > install and for some machines detection doesn't work, then the highest res
> > given in the drop down in preferences is 800*600, and there's no way to
> > change it.
> > Went to terminal and tried about a dozen of these fixes from various user
> > groups. None worked. Either the commands given were not recognised or was
> > told 'permission denied' - but I was in root!
> >
> > Debian seems the most sussed linux version with a huge community
> > maintaining and sorting. Tearing hair etc.
> >
> > Any ideas?
> >
> > Tony
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
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