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New Failsafe Graphics Mode For Ubuntu

Posted by kdawson on from the just-light-the-pixels-please dept.

ianare sends us to Ars Technica for news of the Ubuntu Xorg BulletProof-X feature, coming soon to a 7.10 (Gutsy) build near you. "It provides a failsafe mode that will ensure that users never have to manually configure their graphics hardware settings from the command line. If Xorg fails to start,the failsafe mode will initiate with minimalistic settings, low resolution, and a limited number of colors. The failsafe mode also automatically runs Ubuntu's new GTK-based display configuration utility so that users can easily test various display settings and choose a configuration that will work properly with their hardware."

4 of 505 comments (clear)

  1. great! by datapharmer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is great, but should have been done a long time ago! I have heard several people say they "tried ubuntu but it wouldn't work"... I determined the graphics failure to be an issue 100% of the time.

    --
    Get a web developer
  2. Thanks, Ubuntu. by Esteanil · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Although I've haven't had *nix installed on any of my home computers yet, I'm very happy indeed that Windows XP looks to be the last MS OS I will ever use.
    Changing to Linux is now something I'm thinking about on at least a weekly basis, and the upcoming version Ubuntu seems very likely to make me leave Windows. (Except for a small gaming partition).

    --
    I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
  3. I think that is more a problem of perception. by khasim · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Linux is generally nice and stable, but when it does go wrong, to most people it's just far, far too hard to recover your installation back into a working state - much more so than, dare I say it, Windows.

    I think that that is the case ONLY because those people are coming from a Windows background.

    Personally, I find it far, Far, FAR, FAR easier to recover a damaged Linux box than a damaged Windows box. But that is primarily because the damaged Windows boxes that I get have major Registry issues.

    As long as you can get an Ubuntu box to boot to the command line, it is "easy" to fix. "Easy" is in quotes because it takes a little bit of knowledge. But not much. I'm running Gutsy Gibbon at home and even with 2 problems (it is still alpha) I've been able to recover my system without rebooting in less than 5 minutes.

    The magic is in APT and the repositories. As long as I can connect to the repositories and run APT, I can remove the problem or re-install over it.

    As more people become familiar with Ubuntu (and Debian and Debian-based distributions) the "fear" of Linux will vanish. It's just so much EASIER than Windows. (unless your hardware isn't supported but that's a different issue)
  4. It doesn't look that good.. by NekoXP · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Assumptions:

    1) You're running an x86 PC with a VESA compliant graphics card, or any platform which has 'legacy VGA' registers mapped. What about PPC or something? It's frighteningly rare for the kernel framebuffer not to work on these platforms but there are some times where the X.org driver/autodetect or most commonly GDM doesn't quite configure your card correctly and hands you a garbage display. I never understood why X.org can't have a TRUE framebuffer console driver which simply inherits the mode the kernel gives it.

    This isn't bulletproof it's just a band-aid.

    2) Everyone loves GTK+ - well, I pretty much don't. Does this mean the Kubuntu guys have to install GTK now? Actually not, because there is a cute KDE app for it, but seriously.. why does everyone fawn over the GTK stuff and never show the Qt stuff?

    In fact, it turns out this was a KDE app to start with. Quote;

    displayconfig-gtk is a GTK/Python frontend being developed for KDE's guidance configuration system by glatzor, mvo, and others. In addition to using this in the failsafe mode, this is plugged into Ubuntu's System / Administration menu so users can also use it for configuring their system once successfully booted into X (shown below).


    Which just begs the question, why wasn't this news when the KDE app got written?

    3) Everyone loves GDM, well, I don't. What's up with KDM these days? Does it handle it better? None of the developers are telling the success story on any project I'm watching right now, it's all "GDM breaks this" and "we have problems with that". So it worked on KDE before, but nobody thought to say "this is a great feature, now we port it to GTK"?

    There are some very strange priorities in the software world these days.. bug reports flood the net and nobody talks about anything being finished..