but it isn't the first thing that you should do. You need a fairly recent
kernel with the proprietary binary blobs. Debian strips them out which is
why I mentioned it. Besides Debian 5 has a very old kernel. Then you need
the proprietary driver. You get better performance out of them and laptops
are notorious for have lots of proprietary parts, so living without them is
going to be painful in the long run. If it seems that Debian is not going to
work for you then you should look at Mint or one of the *buntus. Don't
expect it to work OTB, though. You need to install the right drivers. Many
distributions default to a plain open driver for various reasons and you
will experience the same issue.
Ubuntu makes it easy, by having a tool that installs proprietary drivers.
However, the same driver is in the repositories and you can manually install
it. This should be the same in other distributions. In Synaptic search (not
quick search) for the name of your graphics card, just the manufacturer will
do, ATI, Nvidia, Intel etc. The description will list what cards or chipsets
it supports. Then you install it. It will need to match the driver to the
kernel and headers and install it as a module. Synaptic should take care of
that. You will have to re-boot for it to take effect. I have had some
distros go back to the old driver on re-boot. in Fedora I had to put a line
in grub to make it not use the nouveau driver, for example. In Ubuntu, I
have had it sometimes not use the compositing, so I go to the settings and
have to turn it back on. It does this by switching the window manager from
Compiz back to Metacity. It is a pain. It happens on this system with GNOME,
but not KDE, on the same base. The driver is working, but not the way I want
it. By switching window manager it fixes the problem.
Distro hopping is a lot of work and it won't resolve the issue unless you
get lucky. Not all distros are created equal. Some are better than others at
detecting the hardware and matching it with a proprietary driver. Mandriva
and openSuSE do this well. Fedora and Debian don't. They are more hands on
distros. Some people like this, others don't. Ubuntu is better than most. It
will default to a plain driver, but make it easy to get the correct one.
However, sometimes it gets it right the first time which is nice.
These issues go in cycles. Different OEMs release new drivers at different
times, new kernels will offer better detection, distros will include them as
they become available or in their next release. It is often just
happenstance that you will have a good experience with one release and a bad
one with the next. It is best not to read too much into them. A better
picture is formed over a period of time.
Roy
Using Kubuntu 10.10, 64-bit
Location: Canada
On 8 February 2011 12:55, Tony Mitchell <greenstar@care4free.net> wrote:
>
>
> Ah! I seem to have started a war! Not my intention, I am sure. I now
> know my monitor and graphics details, but am still darned if I know how
> to increase the resolution on my laptop, as the dropdown, as originally
> described, contains no choices. Roy has shed some light on this, but to
> date I don't have a fix.
> Now, to me, debian looks very pretty, but am prepared to try other
> versions if that's what it takes. Trouble is, I have found the same
> monitor res issue with Puppy, macpup, mint, dream, lubuntu, and am weary
> of burning CD's. It's a pity if these don't work with an old laptop, as
> this appears to be partly their purpose. Antix does seem to set up the
> res, although to date I can't get the desktop background to show. It's
> just black, with all the icons etc clear. I've not installed it. Guess I
> need to spend time fiddling to see what's happening here and if it all
> works!
> Don't fight each other, folks, not for my benefit.
>
>
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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