Like many other people, I was long stumped (with OpenSuse 11.2) by
Control Centre -> Hardware -> Display
citing ‘unknown’ monitor and offering maximum resolutions like 800x600 much lower than what the monitor can do. More seriously, this actually makes some applications unuseable by causing larger dialogue box windows to overflow the screen.
The solution commonly proposed is to run Sax2; which works! But it is not obvious: More applications -> System -> Sax2.
My point is first to make this evident to others for what is clearly a common problem.
Second, to ask why is this obscure solution necessary rather than being directly proposed in the Control Centre -> Hardware -> Display dialogue when monitor is ‘unknown’? How many innocent users would know about Sax2 & think of searching for it?
I think it is a good subject for SoapBox, and the depreciation of Sax2 is causing concern amongst many that they will be impacted, as their graphic-card / monitor setup, is not being adequately addressed by the auto configuration capabilities of the latest xorg.
Please also note this is a users support forum. Developers and Packagers in the most part do NOT hang out here, so if one wants to get the attention of the Developers or Packagers, then this is not the place. The openSUSE developers and packagers can be reached via openFate or the openSUSE mailing lists.
So, that precaution aside, comments anyone?
Please, I also ask everyone keep the discussion civil. Just because this is being moved to Soap Box does not mean the forum rules can be violated.
It’s a problem with your display adapter + Xorg auto detection not deciding on the screen dimensions + DPI. It’ll get improved in the future and sax2 tool is going away as it’s useless and deprecated, infact it really should’ve been removed in 11.2 already.
“A few isolated posts on a forum a common problem make not.”
Not necessary when Xorg hits suitable level of auto detection which should be pretty close already if you’re using proper driver + proper display. nVidia+dual screens work fine here right out of the box, if I had to do any configuration of any kind, I just used the nvidia-settings to get them done.
Note that the displaysize+dpi instructions can be added to an empty xorg.conf file and it will use those settings.
Is sax2 really “useless and deprecated” ? Obviously not if it enables people to configure their displays that are not detected automatically. I’ve used sax2 and it worked perfectly. Why remove it ?
This reminds me of when alsaconf was removed from the alsa-utils package in many distro’s, for many people it was the only way to configure their sound cards. I remember reading that “if your sound card isn’t detected it’s a bug, please file a bug report”. Brilliant. End result, bug report filed and no sound. >:(
Sax2 works, leave it for the people that need it, and I agree with the OP, it should be more well documented.
Sax2 is working less and less reliably. It does not work well with some new graphic hardware. It even no longer works with some old hardware (for example I raised a bug report on 11.3 M4 on sax2 not working with my FX5200 nvidia graphic card).
SuSE-GmbH do not want to support sax2 anymore. In fact, they made it clear they are dropping support for sax2. They noted anyone from the community is welcome to take up the challenge of maintaining sax2 (and if so it can then possibly be kept in the distribution), but to the best of my knowledge, no one has volunteered. Hence since SuSE-GmbH will not maintain it, and since no volunteer from the community will maintain it, its days are numbered.
Well, wrt alsaconf, we are back there again in 11.2. alsaconf does NOT work in openSUSE-11.2 because alsaconf creates an /etc/modprobe.d/sound file , and openSUSE-11.2 needs an /etc/modprobe.d/50-sound.conf file. Hence alsaconf is now depreciated again.
Thats the problem. Sax2 no longer works in an increasing number of cases. And when it does not work, users fly off the handle and rant as to why is it not working , and why is it being included in the distribution if it is not working nor being maintained ?
Ergo, eventually its not going to be included with openSUSE, because its not being maintained.
… one final qualifying note - I’m all in favour of seeing a graphical wizard like sax2 for cases where the xorg auto config does not work, but the problem is NO ONE will step up to the plate and write such a wizard. SuSE-GmbH have made it clear they will not, and if no one from the community does, then there will be such tool. For certain I do not have the expertise to write such a wizard and I suspect 99.999% of those on our forum also do not have the expertise and time to write such a wizard.
Because it should not be needed at all - sax2 is just band aid for the real problems that need to be fixed (such as randr support from nVidia drivers).
As oldcpu already noted, running alsaconf on 11.2 will break your sound and should not be used under any cirumstance hence alsaconf should have been removed (and SuSE devs didn’t, big mistake).
It doesn’t work - that’s the problem. It writes useless information into the xorg.conf that’s no longer needed and could break at any time if the upstream decides to change the layout.
SaX2 is dead and buried, much like kde3.5 Let it die.
Always thought it was silly that every distro had to supply its own “first aid” to hardware detection and configuration, with widely varying results. Surely better all round for that to be done by a combination of kernel/modules and/or the X system. That would certainly help the smaller distros with fewer resources.
If hardware manufacturers are to work closer with linux, it would be easier for them to work with just one or two competent bodies of development, rather than with an array of open-source projects.