[ale] gdm crashes my laptop

[Michael B. Trausch]

John Heim, on 08/23/2007 01:51 PM said:
> From: "Michael B. Trausch" <mike at trausch.us>
> ?>> This did not work. But I deleted /ext/X11/xorg.conf and that worked. I 
> now
>>> have a GUI.  Next, install the screen reader for gnome, orca.
>>>
>> Interesting.
>> 'sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg' will help you setup a working 
>> X.org>configuration file with better settings than
>> the defaults without it.
>>
>> IIRC, without the xorg.conf file, you get the VESA driver and next to
>> nothing in the way of extra input devices and the like (and certainly no
>> scroll-wheel, either, I don't think).
> 
> Yeah, I assumed it would recreate the xorg.conf. But it didn't.
> 
> I think earlier I did try "dpkg-reconfigure  xserver-xorg" but it was asking 
> me questions I didn't know the answer to. Like screen resolution and refresh 
> rate.  I can't read the manual to get those.  Maybe they're in the old 
> xorg.conf (which I actually renamed and did not delete). But I have 
> absolutely no idea of what these values should be because I have never dealt 
> with the GUI before. I am typing this message on a Windows machine and I 
> have no idea what the screen resolution is set to. It could be 20 x 3295.2 
> for all I know.
> 

When I am uncertain of the settings to use, I resort to trial-and-error.
 Most modern monitors accept a wide range of refresh rates, though
you'll know if your monitor doesn't like what you pick because it will
simply refuse to work.

I know that older monitors were sometimes overly sensitive to such
things and would have the potential to self-destruct with values it
tried to comply with that were outside of its range.  However, I have
not ever seen---nor heard of---this happening with newer CRTs.  I don't
imagine it's possible with LCDs at all, but in my experience I have
found that LCDs use lower refresh rates than CRTs do---mine, for
example, doesn't like anything more than 60Hz, and wants 55Hz as an
ideal.  It looks horrid at 54Hz, though.

>
> Normally, I'd handle this problem by running ubuntu and saving the xorg.conf 
> file back to the hd. But I can't get the live ubuntu CD to talk on this 
> laptop.  If you start speech on a machine with 256 Mb of RAM, ubuntu freezes 
> up.
> 
> Oh, I know... I'll start ubuntu, run gnome-terminal, and scp the xorg.conf 
> file to another machine. Then reboot and copy it back to the hd. I think I 
> can start gnome-terminal and type in an scp command w/o speech. I'll know if 
> I got it right by checking if the file exists on the other machine.
> 
> Let you know if it works tomorrow.
> 

Am interested in hearing back :)

	-- Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch              Internet Mail & Jabber: mike at trausch.us
Phone:  (404) 592-5746 x1                        http://www.trausch.us/
Mobile: (678) 522-7934            VoIP: 6453 at sip.trausch.us, 861384 at fwd

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