> Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2005 15:04:04 -0600 > From: Jim Crumley <crumley at belka.space.umn.edu> > On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 01:31:33PM -0600, Chris Schumann wrote: > > I'm a Red Hat and Fedora user so far. But now I have an old > > laptop (486) that I want to get running. Debian seems OK, but > > the XFree86 is lame (320x200). > > 320x200 ? That's odd. If that's your main problem with Debian > on the laptop, you might want to search for a better XF86Config > for it. Does the laptop have a CD drive? If so you might want > to try Knoppix, which sometimes does a better job of configuring > X than Debian itself. Just boot up Knoppix, and copy the > XF86Config to your Debian partition. The issue is that the laptop has the WD 90C24 chip. The svga driver (or that portion) was not ported to XFree86 4.x and the package has no maintainer. The generic vga driver is being used, so that's limited to 64k video memory with 1 or 8 bits per pixel, and 256k with 4. My machine has 1024k video memory, which is enough for 640x480 at 24bpp. The old laptop is an IBM ThinkPad 750P. It has no CD-ROM at all. I can network with it, but that won't let me boot Knoppix. I'm also limited by the 36MB of RAM in it right now, which I just upgraded on Saturday to that maximum level. At least Linux can see and use the 12GB hard disk in it.