Couple of GUI problems in MEPIS

[Jomboni]

I installed MEPIS to my hard drive and love it, except for a couple little things that are bugging me:

1. I can't set the resolution above 1024x768. I prefer 1280x1024... when I try and change it using their tools it doesn't work, when I try and edit XF86Config-4 manually it doesn't work. I even tried doing a fresh install of Mandrake and setting the resolution at 1280x1024 in there (it DOES work in Mandrake) and copying my X config file over to the Mepis install, but to no avail. My monitor is a Viewsonic A75s and I have a Geforce 3. Mepis uses Nvidia's proprietary drivers by default (nvidia) but I tried the generic ones too (nv) and neither one lets me increase the resolution.

2. I can't get Gnome installed. I tried "apt-get install gnome" and everything seemed to go ok, but when I log into Gnome it doesn't load any window manager. Metacity is installed.

I checked the Mepis forums first and a lot of people there are having the Gnome problem, but on the whole the people on the forum don't have that much experience and I haven't been able to find a definitive answer. Any ideas?

[Jomboni]

I'm still lost on this.

My new theory was that maybe Mandrake 9.2 and Mepis used different versions of X, and maybe the configuration files weren't compatible. but I just checked and they're both using 4.3...

[another_noob]

How odd I've been play with mandrake and MEPIS as well and just this morning I set it up to that resolution.

What I did was go into the KDE control centre and select peripherals then display. I noticed that here my video card and monitor weren't set up so I went through the sections step by step and added my config manually. logged out and restarted X server and it worked. The only thing is it changed my Nvidia driver to the free nv driver so you have the go into your XF86Config-4 file and change nv back to nvidia and it should work.

Hope this helps

[Jomboni]

I'll give this a try when I get home from work. Thanks!

[knute]

If your monitor is capable of a certain resolution, but has a screwy EDID, you have to use the IgnoreEDID (or something similar to that) switch in you XF86Config file. I had to do that with my dell monitor, not sure if your's needs something like that or not.