ATI x1600 resolution in Sabayon Linux.

[moon111]

Maybe I should of put this under operating system?

Wanted to try Linux, I installed Sabayon Linux on my old IDE 80gb harddrive.
I grew up on DOS and used UNIX exclusively in college, so I figured this wouldn't be too much of a problem. As an out-of-the-box experience, the OS is awesome. However, the first thing wanting to change was getting it past the Mickey Mouse screen resolution of 1024 x 768, but that's the highest setting around.

Now here's where I'm finding Linux completely falling apart. For something that one should find very easy, it is a complete headache. The fact is, Tux should be holding a sign that says "Bill Gates Rules"! There seems to be allot of 'community' help, but when you see newbies asking for help, the answers might as well be, "Orbit rocket around the moon and return to earth." Sounds simple but it leaves out allot of details on how to do just that.

So far I've spent the day piecing together how to install drivers for an ATI 1600, and editing some file to manually change the size, but it didn't make a difference. Linux might not be the problem, but instructions whether official or from Linux forum groups leaves allot to be desired.

 

[Rob Williams]

If there's one thing I've found out, it's that ATI cards suck under Linux. The last time I tried to install one (for a 3000-series card), I rebooted to find out that it didn't actually install at all. In short, NVIDIA cards give far better Linux experiences as far as I'm concerned. This isn't so much the fault of Linux, but rather the benefit of NVIDIA having developed good drivers for quite a while. ATI came into the game late.

That said, I'm not that familiar with installing ATI cards under Linux, but I wouldn't imagine it'd be that difficult. You'd want to first open up the package manager software with Sabayon (Entropy) and search for ATI there. The results should be somewhat clear. I believe the official drivers are "x11-drivers/ati-drivers", so if it looks like that at all, you should be good to install them.

Or, if the driver is already installed, maybe you are using an odd monitor (which?) that has poor built-in EDID, so you might have to set the resolution yourself if it's possible. It would be a matter of editing your xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) and adding the resolution you want to the section that looks like this:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Card0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Viewport    0 0
        Depth       24
        Modes      "2560x1600" "1920x1200" "1680x1050"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Yours will look a little different, but I think it's pretty self-explanatory. If you can't get anywhere, let me know and we can figure it out. You could set up an SSH server (extremely easy) and I could just log in and see what I could accomplish remotely. I can assure you that if you had an NVIDIA card, you wouldn't have this issue though. The same might be said about newer ATI chipsets also... I haven't tried in a while though. But from what I can tell, this comes down to the fault of ATI, not Linux. It sucks either way though.

 

[moon111]

I had actually did the right things, but made a mistake the xorg.conf file. It was a good learning experience because it makes me take a step back and know how it feels to be a frustated Windows user. ATI's documentation for instance left me pretty confused. Reading forum discussions left me searching for more. I'm guilty about doing this in Windows, to people. You just get use to thinking people know the basics.

In the end, what really helped me was going to Saybayon's chat room. I was going all over trying to figure out what was wrong. They got me in one direction, so I stopped looking elsewhere and finally found the simple goof on my own part.

Now if I could only memorize the directory's tree, I'll be in business.

Hmmm.... how does one go about developing an application to mod the resolutions without going into terminal?

 

[Rob Williams]

Well, just realize that this hassle isn't completely typical. Normally, distros should pick up your exact graphics card model and adjust the resolution appropriately to your screen, especially distros like Sabayon. As for coding an application, I'm not sure the purpose for that. Why would you need to continually switch the resolution? If you are already using your monitor's native resolution, any other resolution below that should be available to you. Just check out the display properties in Sabayon (right-click desktop and go to Display Properties). Let me know what your goals are and I can try to help you out.