Hi! I've happily been using Trisquel (version 6) for about a year now.
Yesterday I upgraded to Trisquel 7, and now I have a display issue.
I use a laptop computer with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 graphics card. As
far as I understand, there are no free drivers for AMD cards, but it is
possible to use such cards in 'unaccelerated 2D mode'.
In Trisquel 6, if I went to 'System Settings>Details>Graphics', something
like this used to be displayed:
Driver: unidentified
Experience: (fallback)
That led me to believe that the graphics card wasn't used at all. That didn't
bother me, though, as everything looked beautiful and I could edit text,
browse the web and watch video without problems. I could connect an external
1920:1600 screen and get the correct resolution.
In Trisquel 7, 'System Settings>Details>Graphics' now says:
Driver: VESA: MADISON
Standard
I've tried to research the matter, and as far as I understand the VESA driver
is a generic last-resort driver. Apparently the VESA driver should have 'bad
performance' and 'bad (widesreen) screen resolution support'. I also read
something about no multi-monitor support.
The above seems to be true, since in 'System Settings>Displays' there used to
be two screen available; one for the laptop screen and one for the external
screen. Both were able to use their optimal resolutions. Now, in Trisquel 7,
there is only one screen available there, called 'Built-in Display'. There
are only three different 4:3 resolutions available for it.
Here is the output of 'xrandr -q':
xrandr: Failed to get size of gamma for output default
Screen 0: minimum 800 x 600, current 1152 x 864, maximum 1152 x 864
default connected primary 1152x864+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1152x864 0.0*
1024x768 61.0
800x600 61.0
'xrandr -q' used to output information about the laptop screen as well as for
the HDMI or VGA connected screen, and all optimal screen resolutions used to
be there.
So my guess is that in Trisquel 6 the built-in graphics circuits on my
motherboard was used instead of the graphics card, and for me this was a
better choice.
Am I right that I need to get rid of this VESA driver? If so, how do I do
this? If not, have you got any suggestions on how to proceed?
Moreover, I'm interested in if this was an intended change in Trisquel 7. In
my opinion, the Trisquel 6 behavior was better, but perhaps that's just for
me. Does anyone know?
Thanks for a great operating system!
