Laptop display not adjustable?

...did you have an option using key F3 to choose the resolution? What choices were you given and what choice did you take? What resolution do you want? Under Windows, what is the maximum resolution and color depth that you get?

Have you tried any other distros, and if so, what success/failure did you have in the resolution?

Also, to save a post, what sort of connection to the Internet do you have? If you have a broadband connection you may want to download and burn the 3.3.1 or 3.3.1-1 version as they are the most up-to-date.

Jon

Thank you for your reply, Jon.

No, i don't have the option to use F3, only F10 and F12. I am only given the choice to change time, date, hard drive/floppy boot order. none of which could help me, and the MEPIS System Center shows my monitor as "unknown" though it allows me to change the monitor display to another HP-brand, though a laptop choice is not given. I tried various ones listed, e.g. "HP D2807 Ultra VGA 17" Display" to no effect.

What i want is for the entire area of the 17" display to be used, like it shows when booting up, and not a 14" block in the middle surrounded by black.

I have not tried any other distributions yet, this is the first time i have ever installed a new OS on the laptop. I am a complete newbie, and "Pont & Click Linux" seemed to be the best way to switch to linux.

I DO have broadband, and my laptop is equipped with a DVD Rom/CDRW drive, although i've never burned a CD before. How do i do that?

Mahalo for your time.

My latest encounter with Linux came after a raucous parody of a crime boss coming to somebody's house to offer them his "One Care" option for something he'd already sold them.

I found out you could burn a Live Cd, and try Linux without altering your machine. So I dug around one evening, and a columnist recommended MEPIS as the best distro for a complete Linux newbie.

I found one of the mirrors (I'm still behind the 8-ball on any kind of bitorrent download) and read up on how to ensure you get a good download. How to do checksums to make sure that your download transferred accurately.

Once you've found a mirror, and downloaded an ISO, your next step is to burn the ISO to a CD. You need some form of CD burning software in order to do this. This is different from creating a data CD or a music CD. Your software will have a setting somewhere for burning ISO's. Make sure it's not just looking for it's natively created ISO's. Make sure it's looking for "all files" or "all kinds of ISO's"

Your software needs to know it's burning an ISO, otherwise it will just stick the image onto the CD like any other kind of file, and you'll have a CD with a nice ISO icon, that takes up a lot of room, but is, unfortunately, useless.

In brief:
Find a mirror with MEPIS 3.3.1-1
Be patient
Download the ISO
Be patient
Check it
Be patient
Burn it
Be patient

Once you've got a good stable operating CD, you can do all the fiddling and tweaking that you want. But take your time in creating the CD.

Have fun

Holler if you have any questions

HW

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we may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs, but we're presurely destined to be odds without ends
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we may come, touch and go, from atoms and ifs, but we're presurely destined to be odds without ends

Good Morning JackDaKat!

Yes, follow the instructions that HW posted above on getting and burning an ISO. We'll be happy to help you through the specifics if you get lost. When in doubt, please ask first unless you want to create for yourself a lovely set of coasters out of failed CDs

To help you better, can you give us more specifics on your current system, other than what you have on your first post? For the "burning" side, do you know what kind of burning software you have?

Regarding my original post. I'm sorry I wasn't clearer when I was asking for information on your current settings. For the purposes of tuning and adjusting your computer's physical measurements won't work. Knowing that your display is 17 inches is great, but we need to know the graphic display size which will be a set of two or three numbers. The typical size anymore is 1024 "pixels" horizontal and 768 "pixels" vertical (1024x768) with a color resolution of 16 to 32 bpp (bits per pixel). If you don't know this information, you can get it in Windows by cicking on "My Computer", choosing Properties then choosing Display (or some such term). If I'm wrong, I'm sure someone else will correct this post. Gosh! I'm forgetting some of my Windows commands

Anyway, get that new version of the OS because it has a little more flexibility on settings!

We'll see you on the next post

Jon

HW & Jon, much aloha! Thank you both for all the useful info!

Jon, i didn't have windows installed on my laptop anymore, since i did a complete install of SimplyMEPIS, which re-formatted the drive. So following HW's advice, i downladed an ISO of version 3.3.1-1 and burned it to a disk using k3b, (very simple!) and voila! everything looks to be working fine!

The display is being fully used, and no problems making fine adjustments to date/time, appearance, etc. This version doesn't have the Mozilla Suite, but it does have Firefox, which i've used before, so my next project is to downlad and install Thunderbird.

One last question to you 2 Guru's, I know that the guarddog firewall is automatically installed, but what anti-virus program(s) or other security programs do you recommend i install?

Mahalo, ...and much Aloha!
JackDaKat

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What I say is controversial. But I don't use wireless security, I disable Guarddog, and I don't use any other firewall facility.

Instead I stay up-to-date and I know what is running on my machine.

There are no viruses for Linux, and the exploits that have existed were worms that took advantage of ancient software.

I've been using Linux since 1994. Yes, I have been hacked. Through old versions of sendmail. But the hacks were reasonably easy to detect and, while annoying, easy to fix. They even arrested the hacker.

But I digress. If you're concerned about security, keep current. Layers and layers of security products are not the answer.

I'll use an analogy: if you want to keep a sandwich fresh (or dry underwater) use one zip-lock bag that works, not multiple grocery bags with twist-ties.

And, by the way, a router will protect your Windows and Linux machines a lot better than firewall software. $50.

Mahalo for your reply, gvc. All comments are welcome, as I am completely new to Linux, and still carry around the old windows mindset, which is much like your apt analogy of multiple baggies twist-tied together.

I've been eyeing the Linksys Wireless router, but that was before I decided to switch to Linux. Will I have to get one that is compatible with Linux, or are they all created equal?

I'm running an HP laptop with 3.0 Ghz intel pentium 4 HT chip, 512MB of memory, and a 60GB HD. It has a built-in Belkin wireless card. Hope this helps.

Mahalo, and thanks for your comments.
JackDaKat

Hi JackDaKat!

I'm glad that things are working out for you. Congratulations!

As to a router. No, currently you don't need to get a router that "understands" Linux as many of the new ones are connected to and configured via a web interface. I currently have the Linksys WRT54G wireless router. Linksys recently started providing the SOURCE CODE for many of their products (which happens to be Linux). That is not currently of much use to you, and one thing that I've done recently is downloaded alternate source code for the firmware from svaesoft that has some additional goodies. But that's for a later topic

I agree with gvc about a hardware router though. It may be belt+suspenders but I feel better having the hardware exposed to the Internet. That way if I do something stupid (oops, "creative") then I have one more layer of protection.

Regarding anti-virus: The package clamav is loaded on Mepis by default. Also, for anti-spam, spamassassin is loaded by default. However, if you end up eventually using Thunderbird (that's what I use) then clamav isn't directly tied into it. I don't want to go into details right now, mainly because I'm not familiar with all of the details, but gvc is right on this too; it's not that big a deal. One thing that Thunderbird is nice at also is anti-spam. Once you get TB configured and turn on spam protection it will learn to filter your email and put the spam in a separate folder.

The fastest way to install thunderbird is through apt-get as root:

apt-get install mozilla-thunderbird

Please note, if you want to use synaptic instead, that the name of the package is "mozilla-thunderbird".

It is fairly easy to stay up-to-date so once you get your new "toy" stabilized and are ready for some new tips, pop on back and we'll be happy to share them with you

Jon