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I had it with Windows Vista at the end of 2007. Between the week of constant nagging that I had to re-register my laptop (I had to replace the motherboard about six or seven weeks ago, so naturally Vista believes I am pirating the OS), all the general build-up of crud in Windows and my desire to get Linux to work with NetWare and eDirectory, I dumped Vista just after Christmas. After backing up most of my data (once again I had forgotten my Thunderbird address book), I popped in the SLED 10 DVD to start my voyage that would eventually lead to my using two different external monitors and a total of four different Linux distros before determining what my final setup will be.

SLED 10

Since I was installing SLED 10 on my laptop when I was at home, I did not have access to most of the resources I would have had at work. I did a fairly basic installation, adding the tools necessary to compile source code so that I could then install the proprietary drivers for my laptop’s ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 video card. Things seemed to be OK after the initial setup. However, even with the latest drivers from ATI, I could not get the correct screen resolution on my laptop’s built-in widescreen LCD. The native resolution is 1680×1050, but I could not get anything larger than 1280×1024, nor could I get a widescreen aspect ratio. When I brought my laptop to work and dropped it into the docking station, I discovered that my external monitor would only clone the 1280×1024. Even with a 3:4 aspect ratio, I could not get my external monitor’s 1600×1200 native resolution out of Linux.

I did eventually figure out how to get SaX2 to enable Xinerama to enable dual monitor support, but I was still not satisfied. I could not get Xinerama to give me different resolutions on my two screens. So, one of the screens would always look "funny" with either a horizontally expanded image or a cropped image that required pan and scan with the mouse to see everything. It was at this point that I gave up on SLED 10.

Ubuntu

I set my sights on Ubuntu 7.10, dubbed Gutsy Gibbon. I am quite familiar with Ubuntu now, having run it at home for my file server since Ubuntu 6.07. The installation went rather smoothly, although I forgot to edit the partition table so I wiped everything out from the SLED 10 installation, including the /home directory. It wasn’t too bad, though, as I had already backed up the contents to another machine. Without having to install any proprietary drivers, I was able to get 1680×1050 on my laptop’s built-in LCD screen. However, I was still unable to get different resolutios for the different screens. Every time I tried to setup dual screens in Ubuntu, my graphics would get corrupted and I would have to manually edit my xorg.conf file and restart the GDM. I quickly gave up on Ubuntu.

SLED 10 SP1

Yes, you are reading that correctly: I went back to SLED 10. However, I did go for SP1 this time. I had a marginally better experience this time than when I first went with SLED 10. For one, I was able to connect my Microsoft Optical Desktop Elite for Bluetooth. Unfortunately, while I was able to connect it using hidd --search, those connections would drop frequently enough that I switched to a Logitech Cordless Comfort Laser set after a few days.

Things were going pretty well the first day. I decided to put up with the crazy resolution issues by swapping my 20-inch LCD monitor for a 19-inch widescreen LCD monitor. I was able to get widescreen resolutions, albeit not the correct ones, but it was still an improvement over previous setups. Then I went home and discovered that Linux did not care that my computer was not docked and not connected to an external monitor. Linux decided that I still wanted to have my desktop expanded across two monitors, and I just had to keep an eye on which side of the extra-wide desktop my applications opened. I did finally get the second screen disabled, but I had to reset X11’s setup using a default copy of the xorg.conf file. I had to reconfigure X11 when I returned to work the next day, because I wanted to have my desktop expanded over the two screens again. This was becoming too much work just to use my laptop for daily tasks. I gave up on SLED 10 SP1

openSUSE 10.3

Over the weekend, I downloaded the DVD ISO for openSUSE 10.3. I spent Monday afternoon getting it installed on my laptop. I was able to keep my files because I kept the /home directory on its own partition. I found that the ATI video drivers were available through a one-click installer link on a Linux and Open Source Blog post. The one-click is a bit of a misnomer, as it only initiates YaST with a meta package. There are still a few more clicks once YaST starts.

Once I installed the latest drivers, I was unable to open the Graphics Card and Monitor control panel. Every time I try to open it, nothing happens. Ever. The same is true for the Mouse and Keyboard control panels, since they also use SaX2 (I am assuming that SaX2 is available, since I could not open the control panels to find out for sure).

I was able to use the ATI Catalyst Control Center to set some of the graphics options, such as toggling the external monitor. However, I was still limited to 1280×1024 for my screen resolution, without tolerable widescreen resolutions or the ability to set different resolutions for the two monitors. I also could not enable the desktop effects with compiz. It was more of the same lack of functionality as the other Linux distributions, but slightly worse.

I will give this at least another day, but I am pretty sure I am going back to Windows. I am still undecided as to which version of Windows I will use. I guess you’ll have to check back here in another day or two to find out.