Yesterday I replaced my failing 1600×1200 monitor with a 2048 capable monitor. I expected X11/KDE to continue with a 1600×1200 desktop, but noooo. The new monitor was detected and the desktop was auto-magically reconfigured to 2048×1536. Fonts and icons were also scaled automatically. When I switched the resolution back to 1600×1200, icons and fonts became huge, not looking at all like with the old monitor.
Thus, X11 on SuSE Linux 10.0 continues to plague me. Things have been off since installing the ATI driver. Since then, SuSE has chosen to reset the xorg.conf file at least twice for no apparent reason. And now a non-intuitive, uncontrollable desktop sizing algorithm.
In my experience, WindowsXP always uses the same number of pixels to display something until an administrator makes a change. So as one changes the graphics card resolution from 1600×12 to 1280×1024, 800×600, objects and fonts on the desktop keep getting bigger (like zooming in). I’ve never changed a monitor on WinXP and rebooted, so I don’t know what happens.
The KDE/X11 auto-reconfiguration was unacceptable because of the flicker at the 2048 setting. And, unlike when I installed SuSE, it never asked what resolution I wanted to be “standard”. Moreover, as I played around with different resolutions, the fonts became damaged.
Solution: I created a new user (which also defaulted to 2048) and experimented with various settings until I got 1600×1200 to look good. Then by comparing files, I was able to copy .fonts.conf from the experimental account to fix things.
Settings from SuSE control center:
- Display – 1600×1200, 85Hz, apply settings at KDE startup.
- Fonts – Sans Serif 9 (or Monospace 9) for everything.
- Icons/Desktop – 32 pixels
- Icons/Toolbar, Main Toolbar – 22 pixels
- Icons/Small – 16 pixels
While this is workable, it’s still not ideal, because the login screen runs at 2048, all new user accounts will have to be manually adjusted, etc. Presumably there is some way to solve this within the magic xorg.conf file, but its modification date wasn’t changed. The only files that changed were /etc/X11/qtrc and qt_plugins. So once again with X11 and SuSE, I have no idea where it stored all of these changes it made.
Did learn about xdpyinfo, which showed that the monitor had correctly reported its max resolution and the size of the screen (400mm x 300mm).