Any way to make Ubuntu 6.10 detect my video card?

Question

The question I asked before is the link below, which is still not quite answered (but thankyou to Linux-OpenSuse regardless).

I'm very new to Ubuntu and would like to display it in full screen resolution. It's max resolution is 800*600 and it reads a 'generic' video device only? How to make this detect my video card and utilize this to set my screen resolution and other graphical OS tasks? I don't want to upgrade to version 7.

If the community could, read the in-depth question from before, and i'll try to put this question in another category.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApHGtYNaXZHwLRYiF6DXtMQjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20071010054315AA96yb8

Thankyou to all who attempt and read. Cheers!

Answer 1

I'm not a big ubuntu fan but I have 7.04 installed on a laptop I'm not using and 7.10 is trying to install itself on a laptop next to me as I type this. My desktop is running Debian testing. Debian is the parent distro for ubuntu. In fact I know and I've run the command I'm going to tell you to run on Ubuntu. It comes from Debian.



First you need some technical information. You have the video card's name but you need some information about your monitor. Go to your Windoze Control Panel (or whatever it's called), and check hardware and devices. You should find the monitor's name and serial number. It's nice to have the hsync and vsync (horizontal and vertical sync rates). If you can't find them take the Monitor's name and serial number and enter them in a search engine, or check any technical specs which came with your system. Beyond that you need to know what sort of mouse you have (I still use ps2s) and what sort of keyboard.



Now you are ready to open a terminal and type "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg". This is the same as typing xorgconfig on slackware or some other distribution, except xorgconfig gives you alternative ways of choosing your monitor while dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg defaults to the expert mode. Sorry about that. If you haven't found the hsync and vsync rates for your monitor I use as a default 30-50 and 50-70 for them. For the hsync screen that requires me to define my own hsync rate (choice 11) while for the vsync screen it's the first one. It's never failed me in any case where I've been unable to find the monitor's rates. Another way of checking, especially if you bought your computer as a package, is just to go back and type the model for your computer into http://www.google.com/linux . You will find installation guides with all kinds of information, including peoples' xorg.conf files. That is the file which governs how X-windows deals with your system, including the display. You can read that and copy the information to be used.



As far as the card goes, you will be offered the chance to look at the menu of supported video card. All you have to do is keep scrolling through it until you find Nvidia 6600GT. It will tell you what driver to use. Then if you don't know how much memory your video card uses, make a guess. Once you've answered all the questions it should save all your answers to an xorg.conf file in /etc/X11/ so you can then log out and log back in again. If it doesn't work, you should get to the command line, where you can run dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg again until it works. It should work, though. I've appended some sample pages on X in Ubuntu in sources. I understand that Ubuntu is supposed to be a distribution for people who aren't that tech-savvy, but there really isn't any alternative.

Answer 2

Since Ubuntu is freely distributed is does not have permission to package all the drivers that are available for every hardware. But, you can download whatever drivers you need. Incidentally, I am having a very similar problem with Windows- no sound. On this same comp with Linux Mint- the sound is automatic. With Ubuntu I had to download the "Ubuntu restricted extras" from the software center. Then all worked fine.

Answer 3

Well, you don't give little details like what brand and model of computer you are using, which video card you are using - you know minor details like that. So, given the info you provided, I offer this, you run the configuration program and tell it the right parameters, and click on the tab in the upper left corner, select the bottom box, and reboot.

Answer 4

Try asking at LinuxForums.org - there are lots of knowledgeable minds there! Be sure to mention the make and model of your card too.

Answer 5

You may need to go to the manufactures web site and download an upadated video card.