This is not really a ctwm problem but perhaps someone on this list has
relevant know-how.
In order to replace an ancient and slightly unreliable desktop PC I ordered
a new one from Chillblast, a company that allows orders to be based on
selections from a variety of menus.
https://www.chillblast.com/
I have been happy with intel graphics on desktop PCs and laptops, in the
past (I don't play video games...) so I chose this new intel cpu from the
chillblast menu:
Intel Core i5-9400 Coffee Lake CPU, 6 Cores / 6 Threads, 2.9 - 4.1GHz
The machine was delivered 12 days ago, and since then I have been
struggling to get the graphics to work: linux (Fedora 31, then Fedora 32
after I upgraded) doesn't yet seem to have the right drivers for the new
cpu and I can only get 1280x1024 screen resolution, which is painful
(though fortunately the flexibility of ctwm, allowing me quickly to switch
to small fonts for text windows and menus by editing .ctwmrc) has helped
enormously, even if the fonts on display connected to the new machine are
all slightly fuzzy.
lxrandr shows only the low resolution option.
I've tried changing grub settings (in /etc/default/grub) to no avail.
I then tried running (but not installing) the linux produced by Intel
(Clear linux: https://clearlinux.org/) running from a usb stick. It
produced full graphics for the screen (with either of two test screens
(1920x1080, and 1680x1050) demonstrating that the new cpu can work with
linux.
I had also installed Windows 10 home, as I occasionally need it, and
although it did not originally have full resolution, after a couple of days
it automatically updated itself -- presumably after downloading a new
driver.
So in principle fedora should also be able to get the full resolution on
either screen. I could not achieve that on fedora 31, so I used the useful
'dnf upgrade' option to upgrade to fedora 32, and so far I have not been
able to get the right driver(s). I presume that eventually one of the
regular updates will fix the problem, but I wonder if anyone on this list
knows how to get required linux driver(s) for the new cpu, or has already
done so. They must exist if Clearlinux works.
These are the only intel modules currently installed on the new machine:
intel-mediasdk-20.1.1-1.fc32.x86_64
libva-intel-driver-2.4.1-2.fc32.x86_64
xorg-x11-drv-intel-2.99.917-45.20200205.fc32.x86_64
Is there a good place to go for pre-release intel graphic drivers? My
searches have so far failed.
Fortunately, for the time being, I can access the chillblast machine logged
in from xterm windows on my old PC with much better text on the screen,
though I've noticed that because ctwm makes it so easy for me to switch
between desktops (ctrl + right or left arrow) I have to be careful to make
sure I am typing into the intended computer! This message is being typed
into yet another remote machine -- my desktop PC on our locked-down campus.
(Perhaps I'll have to do something like using different coloured text in
xterm windows logged into different machines to prevent disastrous
mistakes!)
Thanks.
Aaron
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs
