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I have a 1900x1080 resolution monitor, and after installing Fedora to create a dual boot machine, the maximum resolution Fedora 14 (previously only Windows 7 was installed) can achieve is 1280x1024. Why is this the case? How do I figure out what to do to get full native resolution on my monitor in Fedora?

mattdm
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jonderry
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2 Answers2

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So, this appears to be a really new graphics card. You'll need both an up-to-date X driver and a really recent kernel — in fact, you need the not-yet-released (as of early March 2011) 2.6.38 kernel. (See this article for more on the upcoming kernel release.)

The good news is that the pre-release 2.6.38 kernel is already in the tree for Fedora 15, and the Fedora 15 Alpha release is scheduled for tomorrow today (March 8th, 2011). Get the release from http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/.

I can't promise that that'll make the card work, but the signs look positive. I'm not sure if the needed driver code is in the F15 X.org drivers yet, but the quickest way to find out is to try it.

You can even get the Live Desktop CD option, which will let you test if it works without even reinstalling.

It's possible (likely even) that the required bits will make it into Fedora 14 in a few months. So just waiting is another option.

(Honestly, I think either of those will be a better option than the proprietary binary driver. I've had no end of trouble from that. It's faster at 3D, so if top 3D performance is your main need, it might be worth it, but for general use, eh.)

Update: So, Fedora 15 (final release) is out today. I'm curious — did it work?

mattdm
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  • Right, but IME the proprietary driver is only faster in 3D, much slower in 2D than the open-source driver. – Keith Mar 08 '11 at 08:40
  • You are really fast, I was just about to say that F15 alpha is out :) – phunehehe Mar 08 '11 at 17:45
  • Can you explain why I need the 2.6.38 kernel rather than just the driver? I don't need 3D at all, just the higher resolution. – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 18:00
  • @jonderry, with modern kernels and X, graphics cards are initialized by the kernel. See http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/7943/ and http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_2_6_29#head-e1bab8dc862e3b477cc38d87e8ddc779a66509d1, and the link to h-online in my answer above. Support for your card's family was just now added. – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 18:05
  • I tried booting into Fedora 15 from a DVD and have full resolution. However, it seems like it's probably too unstable of an environment to work in. Are there any other options besides waiting? – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 19:57
  • @jonderry — cool, glad that worked. Another option would be to back-port the specific things you need (X and the kernel) to Fedora 14, either by building them yourself or by attempting to use the updated packages on F14. In fact, you might be able to get this to work on your F14 system by saying yum --enablerepo=rawhide upgrade kernel xorg-x11-drv-ati xorg-x11-drv-ati-firmware. But there's a lot of changes between F14 and F15 so it might try to pull in pretty much everything in order to do that. Dunno. :) – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 20:10
  • @jonderry — that said, I've been running with the Fedora continuously-rolling development tree as my main desktop for several years now, and it's only occasionally caused me horrible pain. The alpha release is much safer than that. :) – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 20:11
  • This may be a stupid question, but I don't have fedora-rawhide.repo on my machine and haven't found what it should be in google. Any suggestion? – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 21:24
  • @jonderry — yum install fedora-release-rawhide and then you'll have it. – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 22:08
  • I eventually found a repo file, installed that, and was getting the same freezing as yesterday. Now, booting into single user mode, I tried yum install fedora-release-rawhide and got Error Downloading Packages: fedora-release-rawhide-14-1.noarch: failure: Packages/fedora-release-rawhide-14-1.noarch.rpm from fedora: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try. Is there a way to get around this, or at least roll back? – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 22:16
  • @jonderry — that basically means it can't contact any of the mirrors defined in your repo file, which makes sense in single user mode (no network). You can bring up the network by hand (ifup eth0 will probably do it) and then proceed. – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 22:26
  • I get configuration for eth0 not found and tried system-config-network and there were no devices listed. – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 22:33
  • Is there a way to undo this? I feel like I've messed up my system and can't do anything now. – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 22:50
  • @jonderry -- so far what you described doesn't seem to have doe anything (other than adding a repo file) so I'm not sure what to undo.... – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 22:57
  • I did successfully do yum --enablerepo=rawhide upgrade kernel xorg-x11-drv-ati xorg-x11-drv-ati-firmware eventually. That is what caused my inability to boot. – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 23:00
  • @jonderry. Ohhhhh. Now I feel a little bit bad that I didn't put a bigger disclaimer on that. Because messing up your system a lot is definitely a possibility. How much stuff did it update? You said you can boot to single-user mode -- can you boot to runlevel 3? (Put "3" on the boot command line instead of "1" or "single".) I think maybe this should be a new question at this point.... ("Help! I followed mattdm's advice and now my system is screwed up. How do I fix it?") – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 23:12
  • Haha, yeah, I did put a question up about how to reinstall and keep my home directory, though ideally I can just fix what's wrong. Yes I can get it to boot up with level 3. – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 23:25
  • @jonderry — how many things updated? It's theoretically possible to roll back a yum transaction (yum history), but if there's hundred new packages it's probably not worth it. (Also, I think possibly the next question is "How do I configure the network by hand in Fedora in text mode?") – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 23:28
  • So am I left with replacing the video card? I assume this would work if I can find a card that will support the correct resolution in Fedora 14? – jonderry Mar 09 '11 at 03:30
  • @jonderry — You could replace it, but once that card is working it's probably going to actually be one of the best choices for Linux. The F15 beta is in a month, and final release in two months. My recommendation is to just live with the reduced resolution until then. – mattdm Mar 09 '11 at 12:26
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Most likely you don't have the driver installed. You have 2 choice:

  1. Use a proprietary driver. You can get proprietary drivers through the manufacturer's website, in this case it's the AMD's download page. Some distros also have proprietary drivers in the repositories. For Fedora check out this Unofficial Fedora FAQ.
  2. Use an opensource driver. This is often not as good as the proprietary one, unless the manufacturer has provided the specifications to opensource developers, in which case it is better. Look into your distro's documentation on how to get opensource drivers. I don't know if this exists for Fedora, though.
phunehehe
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  • OK, I installed the driver, but the max resolution has not changed. It's still 1280x1024 (native is 1900x1080). Is there any way to verify that the correct driver is installed, or is there another explanation for why I can't get more resolution? – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 02:32
  • Fedora will have a pretty recent version of the Radeon driver; at least one of the driver authors works for Red Hat. But this seems to be a rather recent card. – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 02:37
  • @jonderry Then maybe you have to manually change the resolution. Have you tried changing /etc/X11/xorg.conf? – phunehehe Mar 08 '11 at 02:52
  • I don't have that file on my machine. Should I add it? – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 03:18
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    @jonderry Then maybe you can try creating xorg.conf – phunehehe Mar 08 '11 at 03:26
  • Thanks, I didn't have system-config-display and yum didn't find it, so I used Xorg to create it. Where can I find out what values to set in it? – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 03:37
  • @jonderry Try man xorg.conf :) – phunehehe Mar 08 '11 at 03:44
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    But then also see my answer, because no amount of editing the config file will actually help in this case. :) – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 03:56
  • @mattdm That possible, but maybe the problem doesn't lie in the driver? Furthermore, I saw the Linux driver listed in the AMD download page, so maybe it will work. – phunehehe Mar 08 '11 at 04:21
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    @phunehehe -- for the open source driver, I think it's pretty clear. For the proprietary one, I don't know, but in general modern drivers do a pretty good job of selecting the best possible resolution automatically, so I'd be really surprised if there's anything that can be done in that case either. – mattdm Mar 08 '11 at 04:27
  • well, I'm having a more serious problem that's preventing me from making progress on this right now. Fedora no longer boots: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/8807/fedora-wont-boot-the-startup-progress-bar-goes-all-the-way-to-the-right-and-the – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 04:49
  • OK, phunehehe's suggestion for the other problem worked. I saw somewhere that system-config-display is unavailable for fedora 14, and I also checked xrandr and the same resolution options are available, so perhaps it is something else as mattdm suggests. – jonderry Mar 08 '11 at 06:12