UNIX Desktop Questions & Answers

im very new to linux, and i have been running knoppix. I recently decided to go ahead and install knoppix on the hard drive of my laptop and everything went great. It boots up properly, except one problem, the screen size is small. during the boot, it seems the screen goes much farther down then the monitor then the o/s boots and in maybe a 15in monitor, i get about a 10 in screen. I have a pretty old toshiba laptop satellite 2540cds, so maybe im thinking the monitor cant handle the view larger without muffling the resolution, so it minimizes the screen for maximum resolution. Maybe a driver problem? My guess anyways.

im wondering how i can make the screen larger. the whole o/s is shown in the small screen by the way, just not the boot. i want to maximize the output to the size of my montior, and my skills are as good as moving around the shell prompt and running commands. please help my eyes

ok just to let everyone know,

there is no buttons on the laptop to resize the image like there is on a monitor. there is only a scroller for brightness. the problem im having is similar to the buttons on your monitor that increase the screen size on the monitor. I figure maybe theres a driver or command to run. any help or response is greatly appreciated.

Which window manager are you running?

wow,

im not sure. X window? im using the knoppix version of linux, my skills are only intro to unix. i barely know how to print. im in an intro to unix class so i have no idea about most of unix/linux. i want to make sure i clarify though, i put in both fedora and mandrake, and they boot off the cd and display across the whole screen, during installation gui. just knoppix doesnt. it does during the text mode of the boot, then when the gui starts its like 60% of the monitor, surounded by black, like its off in that area. with other monitors you can use the buttons under the screen to maximize the output, but this laptop only has the brightness screen.

If the X11 is set up for multiple resolutions, you can try switching to the next higher setting.
Try holding down the CONTROL key and ALT key and press the plus sign key on the number key-pad to switch to the next highest resolution. If the first attempt does not change, try it once or twice again. You can cycle through this until you go back to the beginining resolution.
This assumes xorg.conf is setup with multiple resolutions.
Otherwise, if this does nothing, then you may need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

ok,

im gnna try that later. bc i use a toshiba really old laptop, i went into the bios to see what i could find if anything. There was an option to maximize screen output or something, and that did it. i guess knoppix was minimizing it bc the resolution would be too stretched, bc when it was maximized, it looked a lil garbled. but i have class tonight so i will try your theory and get back to you thanks for the reply.