f10 install - low screen resolution

[Bill Davidsen]

Mike Wright wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I've decided it was time to drink the KoolAid so I downloaded the "f10
> Live CD", burned a bootable image, and hit reset.  All in all pretty 
> impressive.
> 
> However, the screen resolution defaulted to 800x600, useless on a 22" 
> lcd display.  In f->system->preferences->hardware->screen_resolution 
> there was only one selection available: 800x600.  Aaargh!  As a 
> work-around I copied over an xorg.conf file from another machine, did 
> the old init 3; init 5 routine and suddenly had a high resolution display.
> 
> What I don't understand is that this display adapter has worked
> beautifully in fc4, fc6, and fc8 installations.
> 
> lspci reveals the card to be an nVidia Corporation NV5M64 [RIVA TNT2
> Model 64/Model 64 Pro] (rev 15) (I know: nVidia = proprietary) but this
> card is ancient and has been well supported for many, many years.
> 
> Now, a neophyte trying out this release would have no idea about
> xorg.conf and would certainly not have a copy of it laying around.  How
> would they be able to handle this?
> 
First, let me agree that the install does a dreadful job of picking screen mode. 
It seems that after the install you find that the display hardware is 
misidentified, and that changing that to "generic LCD" of suitable resolution 
will solve the issue. You can then pick a resolution in the "System" part of the 
menu, and after that set the resolution used in PREFERENCES.

The simple solution seems to be to hit TAB and edit the command line for install 
to include something like "vga=0x318" or even "vga=ask" which get you a menu of 
all available resolutions. See my reply to Tom Lane on his text mode install 
issue for an example of what the prompt looks like.

How the novice would know this I have no idea, but this has been discussed on 
this list before.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot