X failure after upgrade to Meerkat (Ubuntu 10.10)

[Joshua Judson Rosen]

Bruce Labitt <bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net> writes:
>
>   On 10/17/2010 11:07 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote:
> > Bruce Labitt<bruce.labitt at myfairpoint.net>  writes:
> > >
> > > So how does one start the X configuration again?  IIRC,
> > > there used to be routines like xf86config, etc that could be
> > > used to reconfig X.  All I need to is to get the screen
> > > going again at some half decent resolution.  Eventually, it
> > > would be nice to have something like 1600x1080 or so.
> >
> > Isn't /etc/X11/xorg.conf supposed to be basically empty
> > on Ubuntu, these days, with everything autoconfigured?
> > Just ensure that you have an applicable driver installed
> > and it should work?
>
> Old, in computer terms, is yesterday!  This card is OLD in 
> the sense it only has 64M.  So probably 5 YO.
> 
> There really isn't anything in the xorg.conf file.  20-30 
> lines, mostly blank.  Not like say 5 years ago, when there 
> was tons of stuff there.
> 
> What is nouveau?  OK, found that.  This is an experimental 
> driver...

And the driver from NVidia isn't? ;)

Of course, "experimental", in FOSS terms, often means something
more like "the API will probably change"....

But, actually, there's another nvidia driver in Xorg called "nv",
which may have actually been what I was thinking of;
the package for that would be xserver-xorg-video-nv.

If you have to spare space, you can also install xserver-xorg-video-all,
which will pull in *all* of the drivers and then you shouldn't need
to worry about whether you have the one you need....

> My question, this is supposed to be an upgrade - not a new 
> install.  So why didn't 'THEY' look at what was installed 
> already, and use something that would actually work.  I'm 
> really surprised that this happened.  I thought X problems 
> were so yesterday, like GPF or BSOD...  Kind of 
> disappointed, that's all.  Doesn't help get the distro more 
> mainstream, IMHO.

I'm gonna avoid going there--a lot of people wouldn't like
what I'd have to say ;)

-- 
"Don't be afraid to ask (λf.((λx.xx) (λr.f(rr))))."