Poor video quality

Forum: Laptops
Topic: Poor video quality
started by: jpeters

Posted by jpeters on April 26 2006,23:02

I've noted a marked difference from the sharp, clear fonts and graphics when booted up in windows, and the fuzzy, unfocused fonts & graphics when running DSl. I'm using a Dell Inspiron 1000 laptop. I've done the hdparm tweeks, and made sure that the VGA was set to the conrrect decimal number in the menu.lst.

The windows video driver is sisgrv.dll version 6.14.10.3592. Do I need to manually install this driver, or is there some other tweek available? Thanks

Note: I have no idea why this posted twice

Posted by kerry on April 27 2006,00:51

Mine was similar, i beleave it's the lack of fonts. I fixed mine by installing the dsl-artwiz fonts and abiword, for some reason that clears the fonts up so there perfect. Remember to activate the artwiz fonts in konsole type->
sudo xset +fp /opt/fonts/artwiz-aleczapka

then>right click> window manager>restart

You should see your pointer change, there's one little bug though, for some reason the hand icon that clicks on the icons stays the old one. You can fix this by simply going to> desktop>icontool then just click the ok, now the hand pointer should be the right one. good luck

Posted by jpeters on April 27 2006,07:24

Thanks. There does seem to be some improvement with those fonts installed, although I found more improvement by setting "VGA=Normal" instead of a decimal value in menu.lst. I'm still not getting the density of pixels like I do in windows. This resembles using a default driver that doesn't quite make it.

Posted by kerry on April 27 2006,07:46

hmmm, vga=normal interesting. Did you run xsetup? Perhaps you don't have the right amount of colors, i use 1024x768 32 bit. I think for the installed system you use ctl+alt+backspace the type xsetup.

Posted by jpeters on April 27 2006,15:35

I just edited out a problem running "xsetup" On my system it has to be written as "xsetup.sh" to be recognized.

.xserverrc seems to indicate that 32 bit is loaded:

exec /usr/bin/X11/Xvesa -mouse "/dev/psaux" -screen 1024x768x32 -shadow -nolisten tcp -I &>/dev/null

BTW, how did you get the installed fonts to load in ABI Word? They're loaded on the system OK (I have the new pointer, etc.), but don't show up as available fonts in ABI Word. On my install, there's no Fonts folder in the ABI Word directory. Also, they don't appear to be the suggested font type noted in the manual. I tried both versions of ABI Word (GTK2 and older version) with the same results.

Thanks.

Posted by kerry on April 27 2006,22:08

I didn't put any font's in abiword, it installs more fonts. i think there under /usr/share/fonts/type1/gsfonts. i only install abiword for the extra fonts.

Posted by jpeters on April 28 2006,05:18

My mouse pointer, using dsl-artwiz, froze after a reboot, and stayed frozen on subsequent reboots, requiring me to boot from a backup copy kept on a USB device. I also noticed on several occasions the pointer movement got a little erratic. Prior to rebooting, I had loaded GTK2 library and Thunderbird. Whatever the problem was, it must have written itself to the backup copy, because I'm running completely in RAM (I took out my battery and everything!) After reboot, GTK2 and Thunderbird wasn't even loaded, yet the pointer remained frozen. Strange....

Posted by kerry on April 29 2006,04:41

I think you should check the mouse, make sure it's connected good, maybe even clean it, if possiable try with another mouse. Also look to see your not running out of ram, that will cause a lock up. My laptop has 256ram but that was still not enough after i loaded what i wanted to use, so i used a old 512 usb key formatted to swap for swap, after that it was all good.

Posted by jpeters on April 29 2006,08:19

One possibility, I changed the mouse config in the xsetup from IMPS to ps2 port,
which allegedly covers laptop touchpads (which I use). Removing the artwiz fonts didn't solve the problem, as after the reboot I still had a frozen pointer, although without the artwiz graphic (which was good, because I could reinstall them).

The graphics are looking pretty good at this point.

Posted by kerry on April 29 2006,11:34

What's your comp spec's? It sounds like you have low ram left so it's freezing.

Posted by jpeters on April 29 2006,15:37

I'm only using about 12% RAM after a reboot. I also have a 200MG swap partition.
That's why I think it was the mouse config. Only the mouse pointer was frozen, not the entire desktop.