The Heron messed with me :)

[Gtrax]

Definitely I am needing coffee now!
Yep - it was Ubuntu 8.04. Easy install at a friend's PC, so I brought the DVD home and tried it on mine. Ubuntu can be easy if it successfully detects the monitor at the very beginning, but it can be an obstinate s** if it decides all you deserve is 640x480 when our Taxan usually delivers 1600x1200 in 32-bit blendy colours.

First view seemed to be Gnome running KDE menus with Xfce themes somehow all mixed together (I think) Really beautiful heron image art, with suggestions of the Debian origins, but all too overwhelming reds and browns. Already I imagine a reduced version moved to the lower right corner on a transparency, leaving the rest of the desktop for my own art. GIMP is about to get dusted off.

I go for System->Administration->Hardware, but its so limited. It only wants another go at "detect". The result is BAD!. Now the choice is 640x480 or 320x240 and no easy way to get at the menus. Strike1!

Anyways - there follows this mad scene where I try to put the the main iconbar at the bottom, and maybe lose the "other" one. It gets stuck on the left vertical, and the resolution is so low, its totally packed with launcher apps, so there is no place to get a grab on it. Give up - it stays there .. er.. Strike2!

There seems no nice friendly place where I can choose the brand and model, or even insist on horizontal and vertical sync ranges with doom and gloom warnings about monitor damage. Installing NVidia driver delivers a new screen. Same resolution, but clocked smaller and better centered. Oh Joy. "apt-get install nvidia-settings" gets a tool that threatens to be able to choose, and write to /etc/X11/xorg.conf. The screen by now is so bad it only displays part of the NVidia tool window, and it won't let us invoke the promised drop-down list. Arrgh .. Strike3!

So we look for Ubuntu help. Type "monitors" in the search field. Get the most expansive information on "hardware monitor" and "network monitor" and every other kind of "monitor" except the kind that has a screen. Now I know. Hardy joins the group where I will end up having to manually mess with xorg.conf.

That distro is packed with nice stuff, and I know well that one can ultimately make it into a favourite, set up just the way we like. Unfortunately, a fumbler like me can face such hard work getting there even my fully working Gentoo or the untried Crux can seem like a friendlier place, and PCLinux OS is THE place to be when all else has to die under the mkfs.reiserfs nuke option.

[bigtomrodney]

I don't understand this. Did/Do you want help? It's not very productive to work under your own steam, fail and then complain about it.

Did you try the resolution tool under System > Preferences?

[Gtrax]

Ouch bigtomrodney!

Almost certainly you do misunderstand..
For you too react so, even once, means I have badly mis-judged the prose.

Firstly - Its in the coffee lounge! There is a smiley in the title! There are others!

It is a narrative of what happened. It can happen to any of us. It followed an earlier completely successful installation on my friend's machine. How it happened to me only took on manic comic proportions near the end. If I got into a big mess, most of it was likely to be my own fumbles. It was not just any old mess. It was a gargantuan catch-22 where everything I did just got me in deeper, until we all quit in mirth.

Complaining? Yeah - but only slightly. Ubuntu is not one where I yet know the best ways to get it up and running. Except for the getting started pickle, I don't think I was seriously uncomplimentary - a micro-rant perhaps. The install is still there on sda12, and will be made to show its best eventually.

Did/Do you want help?

Thanks much - but not yet, and not in the coffee lounge unless it was offered in passing. My first stop would be the Ubuntu section in this forum. Then the Ubuntu website and all it leads to. Then I would Google and FAQ it ragged. If nothing else worked, I would even copy parts of better functioning xorg.conf from other places. I might even discuss it here. One thing you are quite right about is that I usually end up doing stuff like Linux distro installs under my own steam, and maybe I should not.

I am real sorry the cues you picked up were so negative.
G