mandrake 7.0

[tbank]

I have sucesfully installed Mandrake 7.0 3 times. Each time I have messed it up messing with the Xconig. So I am back at square one. I just reinstalled, and all is working ok except a couple of things. First, I am a complete newbie to linux. I thought it sounded interesting, and I had been reading a large amount about Linux at a variety of web sites, and thought to myself why not diversify. The first problem I am having, is that some of the windows in the KDE are too big and go off of the desktop, for instance the the "Theme Manage" extends beyond the bottom of my screen so that I can't see the buttons to apply any of themes, and when I try to raise it higher it wont let me go any further, and I still can't see them. I think this may have to do with my monitor. I have a 12.1 inch TFT LCD monior, and it isn't exactly "Supported" under Linux. I have all the information I should need on the monitor like vert and Horiz refresh rate etc. In the X config, I have 800 x 600 LCD selected. This monitor, and my s3 savage 4 pro work great under windows, but under mandrake it is another story. I have tried KDE control panel to adjust the sizes of the windows, but for some reason it doesn't have the "general" selection there for me to put the exact dot pixel for them to stop. Any help would be greatly appreciated, as either I am too stupid to figure this one out, or I really have a hell of a lot to learn
thanks
tbank

[rjb]

I don't exactly have an answer, but I ran into the same problem and the only way I could fix it was to run in 1024x780. I don't know why (yet) some windows can't be resized.

[Ardith]

Probably because they aren't made to be any smaller. It can be a pain. Sometimes it seems like all the programmers assume everybody has a big screen. One way to fix it, if you have enough memory, is to have a virtual screen bigger that your monitor can handle. This way, you can scroll around to see all of your windows. For example, if you use 800x600 as your screen resolution, and 1024x768 as your virtual screen size, it will show you 800x600 of that screen at a time. You will need two megs of video memory for a virtual screen size of 1024x768 with 16million colors. To set the virtual screen size you have to edit your XF86Config file. It's in /etc/X11 I think. If it's not there, try /usr/X11R6/lib/X11. At the very end of the file, there will be a paragraph of parameters. There will be others, but it's usually the last one. It should have a line in it saying something like:

Size = "800x600"

And other lines telling what adapter and monitor you are using. After the size line, put in a new line saying:

Virtual 1024 768

or whatever size you want as your virtual screen.

You will have to be root to do this, and you should probably save a backup first, in case you mess up. Call it XF86Config.old or whatever.

Hope this helps.

[tbank]

Thanks Ardith and rjb, I ran across the "Virtual" information at linux care last night. I didn't know what it would it do though since it wasn't explained, and I thought I really messed up my computer. But it does scroll across the entire desk top, I will have to do some rearranging of windows. Also I'm not sure if X is working correctly, when I looked through the config file last night, it still had information on a generic video card, and generic monitor. I'm am using the GUI Configurator in the drakk.conf, setup of mandrake, and I really can't tell if it makes any changes when I set the resolution and so on. However, in the config file I removed all the information about the generic video drivers etc. and put in the information for my card, and the refresh rates for my monitor, I am thinking of removing the "virtual" setting tonight to see if I might be able to get it work without it.

thanks for your help
tbank