Okay, so, yes, it was a rant. Sorry. I just got pissed at people posting up near the top who seem to think that because they didn't have a problem, nobody else should either.
As for my monitor, it's an older one, an Impression 3 Plus SVGA that has worked perfectly in Windows for years. Goes up to 1024x768, NI, at.28. Never had any trouble at all using it in Windows. I would replace it but can't afford to at the moment.
If anyone out there has any useful information, I'd appreciate it. From the response a little further up, looks like there are others who have had the same trouble, so maybe someone has a solution...
I have around ten years of PC experience, including tweaking, optimizing, configuring HW and SW, programming in various languages, and countless DOS, Windows & Mac reinstalls. I am not a moron. I read manuals, I do research on the Web, and if I don't know how to do something I know where to learn. But I have never had as much frustration as when I tried to get X running on my system. The card is an ATI Rage IIC. Yes, I RTFM. Yes, I had all the numbers on my monitor. Yes, I read esr's FAQ. Guess what? None of it helped. No matter what I did, at best I always got a screen that was clear on the left side and distorted on the right. I upgraded my XFree86 installation. I switched between three different distributions (Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake). I tinkered with XF86Config until I wanted to shoot myself. Nothing worked. I banged my head against it for a month. Then I asked about it at comp.windows.x to see if anyone else had had this problem. I got ONE response, from somebody who had the same thing happen to him and was hoping I would get an answer. I never got any help at all. I finally swapped in a crappy old video card and got it working, but later took it out so I could concentrate on learning the command-line interface. I'll buy a different video card later, when I have more money and when I've learned my way around the system the hard way. So, I get very frustrated when I see people complain that if you can't get it working you must be clueless. I can easily imagine less sophisticated users being completely turned off to Linux by: 1) the relative difficulty of using it; 2) the difficulty in some cases of getting it working at all; and 3) the contemptuous attitude of those who have figured it out and therefore think they're hot shit. Every single one of you was once a newbie. Please try to remember that. p.s. Advice and constructive criticism are welcome. Flames will be cheerfully deleted.
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As for my monitor, it's an older one, an Impression 3 Plus SVGA that has worked perfectly in Windows for years. Goes up to 1024x768, NI, at .28. Never had any trouble at all using it in Windows. I would replace it but can't afford to at the moment.
If anyone out there has any useful information, I'd appreciate it. From the response a little further up, looks like there are others who have had the same trouble, so maybe someone has a solution...
I have around ten years of PC experience, including tweaking, optimizing, configuring HW and SW, programming in various languages, and countless DOS, Windows & Mac reinstalls. I am not a moron. I read manuals, I do research on the Web, and if I don't know how to do something I know where to learn. But I have never had as much frustration as when I tried to get X running on my system. The card is an ATI Rage IIC. Yes, I RTFM. Yes, I had all the numbers on my monitor. Yes, I read esr's FAQ. Guess what? None of it helped. No matter what I did, at best I always got a screen that was clear on the left side and distorted on the right. I upgraded my XFree86 installation. I switched between three different distributions (Debian, Red Hat, Mandrake). I tinkered with XF86Config until I wanted to shoot myself. Nothing worked. I banged my head against it for a month. Then I asked about it at comp.windows.x to see if anyone else had had this problem. I got ONE response, from somebody who had the same thing happen to him and was hoping I would get an answer. I never got any help at all. I finally swapped in a crappy old video card and got it working, but later took it out so I could concentrate on learning the command-line interface. I'll buy a different video card later, when I have more money and when I've learned my way around the system the hard way. So, I get very frustrated when I see people complain that if you can't get it working you must be clueless. I can easily imagine less sophisticated users being completely turned off to Linux by: 1) the relative difficulty of using it; 2) the difficulty in some cases of getting it working at all; and 3) the contemptuous attitude of those who have figured it out and therefore think they're hot shit. Every single one of you was once a newbie. Please try to remember that. p.s. Advice and constructive criticism are welcome. Flames will be cheerfully deleted.