[Openchrome-users] openchrome-users Digest, Vol 32, Issue 10

[Xavier Bachelot]

Hi Daniel,

Daniel L. McGrew wrote:
> I'm a newbie and I've had a few experiences with this driver. Here's what I've 
> learned. 
> In the beginning, I didn't know that there was an easy way to re-set your 
> computer to start using the vesa driver again. Therefore, each and every time 
> loading the driver onto my computer would cause it to do something 
> undesirable I would re-load the entire OS... I've gotten much better at 
> backing my stuff up and making it work. It's made me a little more efficient. 
> However, It's just too much work. I'd like to enjoy my computer instead of 
> re-loading the os all the time. 
> 	Then, I discovered that if my computer wouldn't boot to the gui startup or 
> something crazy like that I could just type dpkg-reconfig xserver-xorg, go 
> through the prompts, and it would re-set the computer back to the vesa 
> driver. 
> 	I think that that should be a disclaimer somewhere. Something, somewhere, or 
> everywhere that says a person can re-set their video by typing that at a 
> command prompt. I think that that would be a nice thing to do or at least 
> something, somewhere, or everywhere that tells a person what to do to re-set 
> their display driver if the unichrome one doesn't work for them. I understand 
> that they are all "Use at your own risk" kinda' stuff, and I appreciate all 
> the great work that you are all doing to develop these drivers.   
> 
> 
By using a driver compiled from raw source code because your distro of 
choice doesn't include the needed driver, you agree to do your homework 
and read at least a bit on how to set up xorg on your own, amongst other 
things. I'm glad you already learned a number of things along the way.
The 'dpkg-reconfig' step you describe above will only work on Debian 
(and possibly Debian-like). It is not the only nor the easiest/fastest 
way to change the video driver. It is far easier imho to manually edit 
the xorg.conf, either from the graphical environment, from a virtual 
console or even remotely. These informations are not specific to 
openchrome, and as such, are currently not extensively documented in 
openchrome wiki itself.

If you're not satisfied with the content and/or quality of openchrome 
documentation, which I completely understand and at least partly agree 
with, remember this is a wiki. Feel free to enhance/start a page with 
the informations you would have liked to find. Writing documentation is 
also a way to contribute back to the Community.

imho, Debian is not a distro tailored for newbies, especially in this 
case as it doesn't have support for openchrome out of the box. 
Admittedly, my opinion is probably biased as I've not used debian for a 
long time and I'm maintaining the openchrome Fedora package. Anyway, at 
least Fedora >= 7, Ubuntu >= 8.04, Mandriva >= 2007.0 and probably 
others too do have official openchrome packages and may even install 
openchrome as the default VIA IGPs driver. This is documented in 
openchrome wiki and linked from the front page.
http://wiki.openchrome.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Collection+of+contributed+binary+packages
 From this wiki page, I've just noticed openchrome is now in debian SID. 
The link was added today.

Regards,
Xavier