Linux & Walking Backwards

I'm crowd-sourcing statements, aggregating them to make points. Today's post is assembled from this thread on Ubuntu's forum.

Quote:
Originally posted by robtg

Hi all. Can someone explain to me why displayconfig-gtk was dropped from Ubuntu? I did a clean install of 8.10 and nothing I did would get me above 800x600 resolution. Older releases of Ubuntu did a good job of detecting my laptop's resolution; more recent versions did a miserable job but at least you could use dispalyconfig-gtk to set the correct resolution. Now there's nothing left but the Screen Resolution application which I've never been able to make work.

Why remove a useful tool like this?

-Rob

and

Quote:
Originally posted by ThisisLaw

I agree 100%. That was indeed a useful tool. Not sure why it was removed. Just because something is now auto detected does not mean you remove the other way. Now, I don't mind since things are always fine for me. Almost always once I have the right drivers. But still some people would like this back.

First see the video to the left. This is the kind of thing which we're all bashing our heads into walls over while using Linux Distributions: a step forward in usability will inevitably proceed into the opposite direction because for some incomprehensible reason the developers of distros decid upon successors that are too immature to truly replace their predecessors.

Quote:
Originally posted by robtg

Thanks, but I'm not running Ubuntu at the moment so I don't have the xorg.conf file hady; I was so annoyed at my inability to fix the resolution problem that I installed Pardus Linux over my Ubuntu system. It didn't do any better job of detecting the proper resolution but it has a KDE tool (vaguely similar to displayconfig-gtk) that lets me specify the laptop's resolution and gives me the results I want. It's a very old laptop (Compaq Presario with a "Made for Windows Me" sticker on it!) with an ATI Rage Mobility chipset. As I said, older versions of Ubuntu did a good job of detecting the laptop resolution but not recent versions. I don't think the device autodetection in Xorg is quite ready for prime time yet.

-Rob

aston4

Quote:
Originally posted by robtg

I don't think the device autodetection in Xorg is quite ready for prime time yet.

-Rob

understatement