F18 doesn't see full laptop screen resolution

[Adam Williamson]

On Fri, 2013-02-01 at 14:58 -0800, Per Bothner wrote:
> On 02/01/2013 12:41 PM, Adam Jackson wrote:
> > (To be clear: when I said "foolishly" in my other mail, I meant it in
> > the sense that we're fools for making that trap so easy to fall into.
> > Apologies if offense was taken; none was intended.)
> 
> I appreciate the clarification - I thought it seemed a bit obnoxious.
> 
> > Well, we don't normally set video parameters in the grub config at all.
> > The theory is that you'll only hit 'nomodeset' if you had to use it to
> > install, and in that case if we then defaulted to booting a KMS
> > configuration you'd probably be booting a configuration that you _know_
> > won't work, since it's the same kernel as you just used to run the
> > installer (if you're not enabling updates at install time).
> 
> Disabling KMS in the installed system just because it was disabled during
> installation is at least conceptually wrong, IMO.  It's rather like
> disabling wireless (or networking in general) when installed because
> wireless wasn't configured at install time.  Or disabling graphics
> because you chose to use a text-mode installer.

Well, no it isn't. You might not bother to configure wireless when you
install if you don't need it. But that just doesn't apply to this case
at all. 'basic graphics mode' is pretty clearly positioned as a
workaround for dealing with graphics problems. It is not offered as an
option very prominently, you have to go dig and find it. There's no
particular reason you'd do so unless you had an explicit reason to. It's
not like, on a 'normal' install path, you have a dialog that lets you
pick Basic or Not-Basic and some kind of compelling reason to pick
Not-Basic. Not-Basic is what 99% of people will see. Basic is something
you only see if you picked it explicitly from a fairly obscure place,
which is only going to happen if a) you figured or read that you needed
to do so to deal with a graphics problem you encountered when first
trying in Non-Basic, or b) you twiddle with stuff way more than is good
for you.

I'm just not convinced we need to go to great lengths to deal with case
b), which is you. It happened to you. You complained. We told you what
happened. You now know. This seems like a perfectly appropriate way of
dealing with the problem, given the very small number of people who are
likely to encounter it.

> > So really, to me, this suggests that we should hide the 'nomodeset'
> > install option a little better.  I suspect that showing it early in the
> > install process suggests to people that it's somehow more likely to
> > succeed and therefore desirable.
> 
> Ideally, I'd have the installer ask something like:
> 
>     You are currently running in a basic graphics mode (no kernel 
> mode-setting).
>     Do you want basic graphics mode for your installation?
> 
> Or words to that effect.  We'd only need to show it when actually running
> in basic graphics mode, so it wouldn't clutter up normal installs.

This is way over-engineered.
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net