“Let’s face it; some distributions have better controls for handling display issues than others. Two that do it right out of the box that come to mind include Fedora (Red Hat) and openSUSE (Novell). Each includes tools that minimize the need to do what I gleefully refer to as the ‘Xorg dance’. Basically, these options mean you are going to be spending more time exploring what these distros have to offer, yet less time wondering why your resolution looks completely off. Unfortunately, even with the latest release of Ubuntu, we have yet to see this level of functionality.”
On a clean install Ubuntu Feisty correctly identified my video chipset (i945G) and my old 17″ Dell trinitron monitor down to the precise model number. However it would only boot up in VGA.
I had to edit xorg.conf by hand. I have been a Linux user for six years now, but it still took some thought and effort to work it out. If I had been someone moving from Windows and a Linux newb it probably would have been a complete showstopper.
I hope they get this sorted out by the time they release Gutsy. Then I would feel confident handing out disks to people with no Linux experience. At the moment I have only handed out a couple of disks to IT people with previous Linux experience (one of them responsible for our mission critical Oracle on RHEL system) who wanted to try out Compiz/Beryl on Feisty. I knew that they wouldn’t be phased by this problem
Edited 2007-06-25 22:34
Agreed, this is one of the biggest shortcomings of a fresh Ubuntu install at the moment. I’ve been using Linux since 96, so I can just about handle getting Xorg.conf setup but I don’t see how a newbie could be expected to know these things. On two different CRTs and many different Nvidia graphics chipsets, Ubuntu has never guessed my settings correctly.
Installing the binary Nvidia drivers from Synaptic worked but resulted in a unbootable machine. sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf and a bit head scratching was the order of the day. While doing this, I thought “how could a newbie do this?”.
Ubuntu needs to invest a bit of time in the creation of a new monitor setup util or be remembered as “that disk we tried that made the screen go black” by the typical office IT worker.
The X window system needs a complete replacement, because it`s deprecated long time ago.
The X window system needs a complete replacement, because it`s deprecated long time ago
These problems are not problem with X-windows as such. They are setup configuration problems. My problem was that though the setup could correctly identify my hardware, it could not get the correct display modes and refresh rates from a database. This is not an X-Windows problem.
Nowadays most of those people who were complaining about X-windows being outdated and wanting direct frame buffering are taking it all back.
Today with the addition of XGL/AIXGL and the Compiz/Beryl compositing window managers, X-Windows can produce a 3D desktop with eye candy and bling that surpasses Vista and matches OSX.
X-Windows is alive and kicking ass.
Edited 2007-06-25 23:20
I agree. I think X would be so much better if programs had to send vector graphics commands (like PostScript, PDF, SVG, or Cairo) to the window server (like NeXT, OS X, KDE4, or GNOME) instead of archaic bitmap commands through libX11. Performance would be better with a vector graphics-aware window server–such a window server would orient its drivers for better vector graphics rendering.
Although X’s crowning achievement is the beauty and freedom of mechanism over policy.
Ubuntu is pretty well Debian Unstable tuned up and worked on. Debian does not have gui configuration tools to sort out x-server issues other than the very basic stuff built into say Gnome or KDE. So I guess Ubuntu will have to come up with its own – they’ll need to be good ones – or face continued grouching. A few command line tools won’t do for Ubuntu’s target audience. This will put more pressure on Ubuntu’s fairly small team which it very likely doesn’t need.
I don’t think this article is being all that fair in blaming Ubuntu for the problems with X. Those have a long history and, imho, the wobbly nature of X on Linux is one of the platform’s disaster areas though getting markedly better since Xorg got off the ground. What utter tossers the Xfree greybeards must have been.
Another example of expectations outstripping reality, perhaps. Good tools cannot be rustled up in an instant, and not at all without talent and (very probably) money. This is especially true when display technology is changing rapidly as ever larger and wider screens come onto the market.
I never understood why there weren’t more distros using openSUSE’s SaX2 — http://sax.berlios.de/ . It’s the best X configurator I ever used.
Anyways, the X server is evolving. xrandr1.2[1], plus input and output hotplug will soon kill xorg.conf .
Fedora 7 already includes most of these, and *will* work without an xorg.conf, probing your system and selecting settings at run-time.[2]
In the future you will be able to connect and disconnect monitors and tv-out and set resolutions easily, so tools like this will just be interfaces to xrandr1.2, and this is the reason why ubuntu didn’t want to “waste” time developing a xorg.conf gui, just to scrap it in a near future.
I think Xorg has come very far since the XFree fork, and what we’re seeing are incremental upgrades that are cleaning old cruft and bringing linux/unix desktops up-to-par with OSX and windows. I’m eagerly waiting for these developments to reach my desktop =)
[1] http://keithp.com/blog.html
[2] http://docs.fedoraproject.org/release-notes/f7/en_US/sn-Xorg.html#s…
Sax2 is certainly by far the best tool for dealing with system configuration that I’ve ever seen. None of the other distributions have picked it up probably because every distribution appears to want to do that sort of thing themselves, which does increase variety, but it can also mean that progress isn’t always shared everywhere.
The main problem with Sax2, however, is that it makes it hard to hack you xorg.conf file. As good as Sax2 is, sometimes it just isn’t enough and you need to hack away at xorg.conf yourself. But in order to keep xorg.conf stable and readable by Sax2, Sax2 generates it on boot, so you can never hack it.
I think that it may be possible to make hack-like changes through Sax2, but I’ve never really tried to figure out how. It was too much work and my need wasn’t great enough.
Now this is what we _really_ need. I’d _love_ to have my system dynamically and correctly determine the display settings. However, my main concerns would be:
1) There are times when it’s necessary to force the computer into a certain resolution and/or certain number of colors in order to get some older programs to work and dynamic setting selection won’t do that. You’ll need to be able to alter the settings yourself.
2) What about things like mice? We’re still going to need a way to tell the computer what to do with the various buttons on a mouse. For a simple mouse, it’s not an issue, but for a more complex one, it might be.
Of course, there will probably be (if there aren’t already) solutions to both of those two problems. Overall, I’ll be _very_ excited to see a dynamic solution to Xorg configuration. It’s been far too much of an achilles heal for Linux for too long.
“The main problem with Sax2, however, is that it makes it hard to hack you xorg.conf file. As good as Sax2 is, sometimes it just isn’t enough and you need to hack away at xorg.conf yourself. But in order to keep xorg.conf stable and readable by Sax2, Sax2 generates it on boot, so you can never hack it.”
?? I can do whatever I like with xorg.conf and it doesn’t get overwritten by sax2.
Even when i run sax2 to change some setting it will only change that one setting and leave everything else I changed in xorg.conf alone.
I never understood why there weren’t more distros using openSUSE’s SaX2 — http://sax.berlios.de/ . It’s the best X configurator I ever used.
I have witnessed several times a crashing sax2 and besides now we are oh so concerned with users complete new to the linux platform. How should a user new to linux know what repo he/she should add in order to install a nvidia driver?
There are two ways for a distributor to approach the so-called Xorg dance: either you work with Xorg to address the underlying problem, or you create configuration scripts that manage and edit the xorg.conf file. In the interest of time, Red Hat and Novell chose the latter approach. In the interest of producing a better solution, Ubuntu chose to work with the upstream project.
The free software community needs more distributors like Ubuntu who are willing to invest in upstream projects in order to get the job done right. If SUSE had decided years ago to work with XFree86 to achieve better display configuration support rather than to create SaX2, then we wouldn’t be talking about these issues today. But they chose to wallpaper over the real problem.
If the author hadn’t been living under a rock recently, he would know that the long wait is just about over, as Gutsy and Xorg 7.3 will finally support display autoconfiguration–the right way. In order to reach this milestone, Ubuntu users had to subjected to Xorg’s shortcomings. Without the fragile workarounds preferred by other distributors, the Ubuntu userbase clamored for change. As a result, we will soon have a universal solution to an old problem.
If distributors don’t work closely with upstream projects, they will be forced to add cruft to solve problems. The ability to function as a community of cooperating projects is largely what allows free software to excel in areas where proprietary software does not. The role of a distributor is not simply to package free software and insulate the user from its shortcomings. Distributors should work to make free software better by reaching out to upstream projects.
Without the fragile workarounds preferred by other distributors, the Ubuntu userbase clamored for change. As a result, we will soon have a universal solution to an old problem.
You see, the problem is that it took to Ubuntu 3 releases to archive this, that means 18 months.
They could have easily delivered a work around while the problem was fixed from the roots.
Im sorry, but Ubuntu have no excuse in this one.
I couldn’t say more, you’ve said it all. The future will tell.
I am a big fan of what Ubuntu is trying to do, but they have nothing that matches the wealth of tools that Yast offers. Considering that Yast has been under the GPL for close to two years, it is incomprehensible why Ubuntu doesn’t pick this up and run.
There are literally years of development effort in Yast and it shows as it is a very useful and powerful set of tools.
You hit the nail on the head when you praised YaST for getting it right. YaST is the finest, most-comprehensive system configuration tool I have ever seen on Linux–and perhaps on any operating system.
Ubuntu should definitely pick up something YaST-like because the concept goes well with Ubuntu’s “Linux for human beings” ease-of-use mantra. However, I’m not so sure if they should pick up YaST itself. YaST has a lot of things that need ironing out, namely in the performance department. The old oaf works extremely well, but it’s slow as hell. It’s also not open-ended enough; the ‘wizards’ are too rigid and linear.
On top of that, while SaX2 pretty much knocks the socks off of every other display configuration utility in terms of “fast configuration” and “just works”, I think it does not read the actual conf file, just its internal one, and I know it always makes a new one. There are a number of situations where this could be problematic, namely with the people that ‘hack’ their own x.conf or get other utilities to do it for them.
But don’t get me wrong: YaST (and SaX) is indeed a damn good tool, especially in the hands of an experienced computer user migrating to Linux. In fact, YaST is one of the things that got me hooked on SuSE. (That and its superb hardware detection, but that’s beyond the scope of this post.) Despite that, YaST just doesn’t “fit” with Ubuntu in its current state, though using YaST’s source would definitely be a very good starting point for a global Ubuntu configuration utility.
What I’d really like to see in Ubuntu is a Control Panel akin to the System Preferences app in OS X. I’m sure a lot of people would disagree with me on this one, but I think it’d work quite well for Ubuntu’s target audience. Configuring the distro should be done in one centralized, streamlined, and well-organized place, with a search field where you can type what you’re looking for. It should be brain-dead simple to configure things that have to “just work” in order to prevent Windows users from crawling back to MS, like displays, proprietary codecs, sharing an Internet connection, and adding/removing software. Kubuntu has the right idea with its System Settings applet, but it needs more polish and the ability to easily configure the aforementioned rough spots.
“YaST has a lot of things that need ironing out, namely in the performance department. The old oaf works extremely well, but it’s slow as hell.”
When people say that they often refer to the package management module of YaST.
Name one other module of YaST that is slow?
Most modules do complex things, yet they popup within 2 seconds when selected, I wouldn’t call that slow.
Everything pops up fast enough, and it’s all very responsive …until something finishes (especially the package manager), then the progress bar shows up while everything is configured. That’s what’s slow, and it has always taken at least 5-10 seconds for me, regardless of hardware or platform. I suspect the reason for this is YaST rewrites the whole config no matter what you change, like updating fonts and Xorg.conf when you work on the sound card.
YaST has improved significantly over the years, though. The leap from 9.2 to 10.0 seemed to speed YaST up a lot, and 10.2’s finishing progress bar is noticably faster than the older 10.x versions (but not dramatically so). Launch speed has also improved over the versions.
But it’d be nice if everything were relatively instant, like when you change something in the Windows Control Panel or OS X’s System Preferences, but I’d be happy with a 3 second delay. Perhaps a good way to dramatically increase perceived speed would be to close a configuration module when you’re finished with it and let YaST write the settings without a progress bar.
Edited 2007-06-28 02:39
Fedora core 7 was the only Linux that correctly got me
a nice screen on my 22″ LCD.
And that was just with the default nv driver!
I second that.
F7 correctly identified my the display on all the machines I installed it on.
1: nVidia 6800/24″ Dell LCD. (No modelines needed for 1920×1200)
2: nVidia Quadro 3400/21″ MAG LCD.
3: ATI mach64 / 15″ LCD. (Laptop)
– Gilboa
Edited 2007-06-26 12:38
don’t forget mandriva have a very great tool for setup xorg
Mandriva has had the best display configuration tool all along…the XFdrake tool is marvelous in that it allows user modifications to remain rather than overwrite them without warning like YaST does.
That said, Ubuntu has almost ALWAYS got the xorg.conf wrong on any install I have used. Thing is it allows my 17″ LCD monitor do anything but the recommended resolution.
also dont forget that basically all problems related to resolution are either nvidias notorous edid detection bug which they refuse to fix, or simply the monitors people have, which have faulty edid blobs. Hell, some vendors, like apple, even deliberately put in wrong edid information to annoy its customers.
Yast and Sax2 are damn good tools on SuSE/Novell and OpenSUSE linux boxes ( I think Yoper guys have utilized Yast in their earlier releases) so is XFdrake on all Mandrake/Mandriva based distros ( e.g. PCLinuxOS )
Open your terminal,login as root and type:
XFdrake
(it’s case sensitive) and you’ll get very good GUI interface for xorg.conf file tweaks.
XFdrake is just one module among other great GUI configuration tools found in excellent Mandrake Control Center.
This is another case of saying linux, but pointing at something that still hasn’t reached the functionality of Windows 3.0 – X
X Windows has in all it’s incarnations been nothing but a total headache from day one on actually configuring video modes. I have YET to see the Fedora or OpenSuse tools actually work on ANY hardware, resulting in as much of a ‘xorg.conf’ dance as other distros.
It is also another of the things that stops me from using *nix in any flavor as my primary desktop… Because I’ve been running dual monitor since the time of Windows 3.0 with a targa board – and three or more displays since Windows 98 hit the shelves… and I still can’t get two monitors to work the way I want in any *nix flavor, much less three. (actually, not true, it also works very well in OSX)
So when linux fanboys jump up in down in glee over twinview all I can think is “Welcome to 1991”
This is basic **** that even DOS programs don’t need to futz with just to set a video mode – What the hell? Frankly I think it shows just how strong the codebase and underpinnings of X really are.
Edited 2007-06-26 04:44
X display configuration sucked. The rest was fairly decent. It’s finally fixed in 7.3. That’s all, folks.
I don’t know about your experience, but I could run 3 displays hooked on 2 outputs from my nvidia card + another output from a matrox pci card smoothly and without any problems.
Playing videos worked on all three heads, OpenGL can be shared between the first two ones. Placing the displays virtually is an ease and there are many decent window managers out there who support dual/multi head way better than Windows.
It’s a fact that Xorg configuration sucks a lot. I’m looking forward to the new version, because the status quo is simply _unswallowable_.
But using multiple input and/or output devices is clearly one of the X architectures _strong_ points. Especially, you can configure and tune a lot more than under windows.
>> Especially, you can configure and tune a lot
>> more than under windows.
We’re talking X, right? I hate to call bullshit, but DAMN. You plug it in, you tick a button, you set the resolution, and drag it around WYSIWYG… Set the refresh rate – That’s windows… what the devil else do you need?
Well, at least pre vista – with any mix of cards. Vista went and ****ed that all to hell. Now they all have to be the same make and in the case of nVidia – MODEL. (at least if you have a Ge8, you can’t run them alongside 7’s)
Meanwhile I’ve got a Ge8800GTS, two 7600GT’s, a Matrox and a PCI Radeon 9250 on the shelf, and I have YET to be able to come up with a mix of ANY of those cards and get linux to run more than two monitors without it either crashing (7600+8800), having horrible corruption issues (dual 7600) or forcing me to put their ‘drag’ order in completely nonsensical and undesireable configurations (nVidia + ATI, nVidia + Matrox). The only way I could get it to work was with the two crap cards side by side – not good for someone who is trying to switch from Max to Blender. Hell, Xinerama throws a ricky fit if you just want them to be different resolutions (which in general X handles like a sweetly retarded crack addict)
Much less the lack of a concept of ‘primary’ monitor meaning not only do you have to futz with your xorg.cong – then you have to futz with every damned INI file on every damned program just to have it not display OpenGL fullscreen ‘half and half’… Which is so desirable when you have the displays one atop the other… Especially when no matter what you tell it you get Xinerama for one atop the other, but openGL still thinks they are left-right oriented.
Again, for something I can just plug in and do in seconds in what is rapidly approaching a decade old version of windows, and I believe I’ve been doing under MacOS for an equal if not longer period of time.
Strong point it is NOT. Go look at any linux forums and search for people trying to just go to two monitors, and tell me that’s a strong point.
Edited 2007-06-26 11:53
As your parent said:
It is a strong point of X’s ARCHITECTURE, and an extremely weak one in the CONFIGURATION.
I believe X’s architecture lets you do pretty everything you want, be it locally or remote, but either Xorg.conf does not provide a way to make X do what you want, or it is so mind boggingly complex, that it is undoable for everyone but a die-hard Xorg programmer.
I hope, the Xorg guys will fix that in the near future
Sweet! i didnt know i was a diehard hardcore ultra leet X programmer, i guess i have some hidden talents.
1: easily configure X (while not being afraid of a simple config file)
2: ?
3: profit from newfound programming abilities!
I never had any issues, I used TwinView + Xinerama (including Nvidia + Matrox). I used different screen resolutions, one time I even used an old 5″ monitor which ran on a graphics card (S3 Virge) with 8bpp.
Btw. on some setups I found it more helpful to have different X screens (for example, one on the two main monitors, another one on the third). You then cannot share windows between them, but you gain another way of freedom.
I also used GL apps and it worked flawlessly. I didn’t try to span a 8:3 viewport like you, though. (Is this possible with Windows?)
You gain configuration freedom in the form that you can set it up in various different ways, some example being Screens (then you can even use different window managers!) vs Xinerama. Another form is far better control of CRT monitors. I have some monitor which starts to beep annoyingly running on 85 Hz. I can use xvidtune to “narrow” the horizontal output a bit, and it’s running fine, without going down to 75 Hz..
Note that this worked for me with Xfree86 4.3 already.
So it seems although I tried a relatively similiar video hardware setup, it worked without any problems for me, and with lots of problems for you
The biggest need behind display projects would have be the lack of a GUI method for extending ones desktop onto a second monitor, in addition to taking complete control over the resolution when you need to make necessary adjustments.
The authors need or anyone using linux?
My take: There isn’t happening enough so whatever fills the need for articles.