h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I s'pose this should really go in ask h2g2, but I figure folks 'round here are more likely to know what I'm talking about

I'm having an infuriating problem under Linux (Red Hat 7.2) at the moment... it goes something like this...

I use a monitor permanently rotated to portrait format (so much nicer this way ), via Option "Rotate" in XF86Config-4. This works fine with most things, but in Wine, and with anti-aliasing enabled in KDE, I get this: text simply doesn't show up until you make it refresh somehow... either by moving the mouse over it, or by moving the window, etc, etc.

Wine is thus virtually unusable because in order to read anything, you have to be constantly waving the mouse about/dragging windows...

All my investigations have showed is that it's not the Rotate option itself that's the problem; it's the fact that it enables ShadowFB.

So - does anyone have any suggestions that might save my sanity?

Unfortunatly, I had a similar problem with Icons in gnome, so In the end I just stuck to KDE, is there no way to get it auto refreshing?

-- DoctorMO --

I've been trying to figure it out for the last few days... no luck

I'll see what Wine does under KDE, though...

Wine is one of thoughs programs that I don't like, maily because it give people an easy way out for porting things to linux, and half the time it dosn't work because of incompatabilty isues. What you didn't try KDE?

-- DoctorMO --

Well, no - since I get the same problem with KDE when anti-aliasing is enabled, it's obviously affected by it...

Just tried it and exactly the same happens under KDE in Wine, anti-aliasing or not. No help there...

Bugger, nothing for it.


-- DoctorMO --

Well, I rather hope there is

Just have t' wait for a real Linux expert to wander past...

(er, real as in 'very accomplished')

or real as in 'A few years Experance and a uni server dig'?

-- DoctorMO --

And there's no way to force it to disable ShadowFB when Rotate is on? What graphics card are you using, and what driver set? Which version of XFree86? I suppose it's whatever comes with Red Hat 7.2, but I don't know what that is. I run Gentoo, you see.

Nope - Rotate forces ShadowFB to be on, I'm pretty sure. It's either that or do it in hardware, and my card - Matrox G400 - doesn't support that (most don't, as far as I know). I was using the default driver... I've now got the latest from their website, no change...

Er... how do I tell what version of XFree86 I'm running?

Pull up a terminal and type

XFree86 -version

It should work as any user. It'll spit out a whole load. Mine looks like this:

XFree86 Version 4.2.0 / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6600)
Release Date: 18 January 2002
If the server is older than 6-12 months, or if your card is
newer than the above date, look for a newer version before
reporting problems. (See http://www.XFree86.Org/)
Build Operating System: Linux 2.4.19-r1 i686 [ELF]
Module Loader present

XFree86 Version 4.1.0 (Red Hat Linux release: 4.1.0-3) / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6510)
Release Date: 2 June 2001
If the server is older than 6-12 months, or if your card is
newer than the above date, look for a newer version before
reporting problems. (See http://www.XFree86.Org/FAQ)
Build Operating System: Linux 2.4.7-0.13.1smp i686 [ELF]
Build Host: stripples.devel.redhat.com

Module Loader present

Interesting... perhaps I should upgrade to 4.2.0...?

hmmm, sorry, I thought you'd tryied the latest XFree86 server. Doh. I should remember that it's not like windows, were everythings the same,

-- DoctorMO --

Oooh, you have an SMP kernel. Does that mean you're running on a box with two processors?

Yes, you might try upgrading to 4.2.0 - the drivers for the Matrox cards might well have been updated to make them work, and there are lots of other bugfixes, to some things which got me in 4.1.0 certainly, so it's probably worth doing anyway. I've not had any problems with it.

With any luck, you can get RPMs for it from somewhere, I'm not sure if Red Hat Linux has an updater tool which can grab them automatically for you though. You'll have to figure that one out yourself.

Do I?



Nope - just one processor. Nice fast one though... well... 1.4Ghz, I'm not complaining (yet)

After much pulling out of hair I figured out a workaround - older versions of Wine don't suffer the same problem, so I can use one to do what I want. Still, it would be nice to get it fixed... particularly, by the look of it, if I ever want anti-aliased fonts...

(I did discover another program that suffers the same problem - OpenOffice.org, again only with anti-aliasing enabled)

Anyhow, yus, I'll give it a go... hopefully without breaking everything again

(this Linux stuff is a lark, eh? Grin...)

Linux a lark, you should try windows, were instead of options to fix problems, you have useless help files and blank dialog boxes.

-- DoctorMO --

Well, I've upgraded XFree86... hmm... well...

It hasn't fixed the problem... although it does seem to have changed it so that, not only is the text initially invisible, it's also not anti-aliased when it *does* appear.

Ah well... I have what I need to work, working, anyway

Hmm. I've used Windows a lot more than Linux... to be honest, Windows has proved easier to use - certainly in terms of setting up and installing software and hardware. It's hardly surprising, since Windows is the mainstream option... they have to cater to complete novices, and to some extent they manage to.

Still - I wouldn't be moving to Linux if I didn't see the advantages

Hmm, I have another question... how can I find out how much free space is left on the disk?

None of the obvious programs seem to show it

Try the File Viewer (Usualy works)

-- DoctorMO --