Why Is There Yogurt In Your Cap?

I’ve decided: today is the day that I setup OpenSuse 10.2 on my new system. I just built this PC two weeks ago, and it’s been running Windows XP the entire time. My “old” PC got converted into my full-time OpenSuse box, but I like to have Linux on all of my boxes, at least in a dual-boot setup. Here’s what’s in my new system:

AMD Athlon64X2 6000+
Gigabyte GA-3PXSL-RH MB
PNY Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB
2GB DDR2-667 RAM
Seagate 250GB SATA2 HDD
WD 160GB SATA2 HDD
ASUS 18X DVD+-RW w/Lightscribe SATA
Plextor 48x CDRW IDE
Creative Audigy2

I booted off the DVD, and right away ran into problems. As soon as the bootloader loaded the kernel, my screen goes black. I figure it is probably something to do with my video card, so I reboot the system and press F3 at the DVD boot screen and change my screen to “VESA”. Kernel loads, I see text scrolling on the screen, and then the system locks. I reboot and do the same thing, expecting different results for some reason, but it still doesn’t work. So off to Google I go, searching for the last thing that is listed on my screen before the lockup, “net: registered protocol family 2 opensuse” . The first result has the answer; add maxcpus=0 as a kernel parameter during setup. That does the trick, and the system boots into the Suse installer. I chose all the normal additional things I do during setup (Kernel-sources, C/C++ Dev tools, findutils-locate and nano), and installation proceeds as I would expect it too. I let it update all of the installed software, so it’s less to do later. I get all the way through to where it is detecting hardware, and my screen goes black again. Crap. Reboot, Suse notices that the installation didn’t finish, picks up where it left off, and the gently proceeds to do the same thing.
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For some reason, I am a Suse Linux guy (for the most part). Over the years, I’ve used many distributions, but I keep going back to Suse. But Ubuntu intrigues me. Every time there is a new release I load it up on a spare machine and play with it. So when I saw the beta 7.04 was out, I downloaded it. I installed it. I updated it.

Then I tried to change my display resolution. My choices were 1024×768, 800×600, and the ever-present 640×480. Um, what? Ok, I figure that it didn’t load the proper display driver. I check the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, and I see the open source “radeon” driver is loaded, which is fine for my purposes. Then I see what I figure is the problem: all my color depths have modes of the above-listed resolutions, and nothing higher. So I manually create the modeline for 1600×1200 and add it to all the color-depths. I restart X, expecting things to be right with the world. But it isn’t. It’s all still 1024×768, with no higher choices.

I head back to the xorg.conf file. This time, I notice that my monitor was detected as a standard VESA monitor with crappy horizontal sync and vertical refresh rates. I have a Dell 20.1 LCD, hardly what I would consider a strange display, considering that other distributions find it perfectly. I check the xorg.conf file on one of my other systems and input the correct values for my monitor in this one, restart X, and all is good in the world.

Why, since Ubuntu aims to be a simple-to-use distro, did I have to do this? I had to do this by hand because Ubuntu 7.04 “Feisty Fawn” Beta didn’t come with a utility to allow me to choose my monitor. If I had been an inexperienced user, I would have been screwed. Yes, I know it’s a beta, but we’re two weeks from the official release, and I doubt that this will be changed.

Other than the display issue, Ubuntu 7.04 seems to be very solid and usable. But I don’t think I’ll be switching from Suse permanently any time soon.

Update: Since I wrote this, the final version of “Feisty Fawn” was released. With the same monitor problem.