Question about LCD screens

[Lobster]

Guys,
Also, for desktop LCD panels, are they mostly 1024x768 native size?

Yes that is normal res for 15 " - I have 17" and use 1024x1280
my Brother in Law has 19" but that is not all that common

Most new machines are coming with 17" LCD and that should support 1024x1280, though some people run in the lower res

I usually run in 16 million colours - The human eye can not differentiate 32 million colours as far as I know (or is that a myth?)

[Flash]

... for booting from a live-cd pass this at the boot-prompt instead of choosing a boot option

Code: Select all

vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 initrd=image.gz vga=771

or something like that. you can change the vga parameter to whatever you want to test. ..

Thanks. I didn't realize that was a regular boot prompt where you could enter something besides the numbers provided.

When I entered what you wrote I got this:

...You passed an undefined mode number. Enter RETURN to see video modes available...

So I hit RETURN and got this:

Video adapter: VESA VGA

Mode: cols x rows
0 0F00 80 x 25
1 0F01 80 x 50
2 0F02 80 x 43
3 0F03 80 x 28
4 0F05 80 x 30
5 0F06 80 x 34
6 0F07 80 x 60

I chose 1 (80 x 50) and now I know I prefer bigger text than that for the boot messages. At 80 x 50 it's almost impossible for me to read text that small that's going by so fast. So I rebooted several more times and tried 5 (80 x 34) and 4 (80 x 30). There really wasn't much noticeable difference but I preferred 80 x 30.

[Guest]

If the native resolution is 1600x1200 the 800x600 will look just fine due to geometric scaling.

Bottom line is you won't be able to please everyone. LCDs are always going to be an issue.

[M.Gregg]

Hi,
Please do not remove xvesa, I have found that with wide screen on laptops, that even ubuntu will not configure it correctly giving a split in the screen. Also on qemu xvesa is more usable. xorgworks but is touchy. Wide screen is the most popular now in the U.K. on laptops (new equipment).

Regards
Michael

[dvw86]

I have a 17" (1440 X 900) Dell laptop and xorg works well in it once you get it configured. I had to lie to it a little about the ratio though.

[budden]

Barry,

Older laptops come with 600x800 screens; i have 3 handmedowns of that format (IBM Thinkpad 240) ... two are running puppy as we speak. (These all lack CDs so Puppy is preloaded on another machine).
I have one Sony Viao Picturebook with a 1024x480 (!) screen. But this format is quite rare (cute dog though -- running 1.0.7 with a bunch of windowmanager workarounds to handle the odd size). Also vintage 1999 like the Thinkpads. This pup does have a CD and boots from it.
Any laptops 2-4 years old tend to be 1024x762 as you noted. I have a couple of these (the handmedown rate hasn't picked up yet;) and they've always worked all the video and X issues without hassle.
I have some desktop LCD monitors as well; if they are 2-5 years old, they are 1024x762 as well.
As several posters have noted, newer laptops are spawning larger sizes. Toshiba P series have 1280x800 and Dell 800s have (i think -- it's at the office) 1400-900 -- note that they are moving toward a 'portrait' mode -- wider than they are tall.
What I do _not_ have is anything smaller than 600x800 (I do have a couple Gateways, vintage 1993 (!) with 20M RAM and 120M hard drive. One has a copy of slackware running in it. (I tried slipping a pre-loaded Puppy hard drive into this box but it doesn't work). So reaching back farther than that is probably not worth it. (Anything this old won't have a CD and certainly won't have a bootable CD capability). Point these folks to tomsrtbt rather than puppy.

To me, one of the big attractives of Puppy is the ability to get further use out of a handmedown laptop. Careful not to burn those bridges....

[Guest]

Try this;

vmlinuz root=/dev/ram0 initrd=image.gz vga=normal

I have used it for quite a few different desktops with lcd screens, and on Dell C800, Toshiba 4090XDVD, and my older IBM Thinkpad laptops.
You might have to expand the bootup screen in bios to fill the screen, but once the X mode kicks in "hopefully", you will have a good screen display..

The desktops are mainly used as thin clients with Suse 9.2.
I am working on changing them all over to Puppy, but it is a work in progress..
1024x768 x16, is a good default, but 800x600x16 will work as well on a laptop until the X mode kicks in..

Bob N9LVU

[marksouth2000]

If the native resolution is 1600x1200 the 800x600 will look just fine due to geometric scaling.

I have LCD panels with native resolutions of, respectively, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024, 1280x800.

Experiment shows that they all do the right thing when presented with lower resolutions. They either lower their resolution and spread the image over the whole panel (although the 1280x800 widescreen panel does show 1024x768 somewhat s t r e t c h e d horizontally) or, in the case of the older ones, show the lower res in a smaller section of the panel with a dark border of unused pixels.

So LCD panels seem not to be that big an issue.

[fried]

1680x1050 widescreen - would be nice to have it in the bootmenu

[Auda]

'portrait' mode -- wider than they are tall.

Nope thats landscape. The land is wide and flat, people are tall and skinny, well compared to the land the are.
One of the things about a mac that I liked was that the monitor was portrait the same way a piece of paper is.

Auda