I’ve installed Ubuntu Breezy Badger on my desk. From a GUI perspective it’s just another GNOME. From a system administration perspective, it’s Debian. From an included packages perspective, it’s free software, which means you have to intentionally install unfree features.
I have a usability issue.
My issue is not with Linux but with X, though perhaps the proximate cause of the issue is the installer. During installation I selected the possible resolutions and refresh rates for my monitor. Since I have no clue what the monitor actually supports, and since I think it’s really the computer’s responsibility to figure this out, I chose the defaults. After all, I can change them later, right?
Not exactly.
The GNOME applet for changing the display settings doesn’t display any settings other than those I selected during the installation, instead of displaying all those possible. I suppose I could change the settings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf by hand, if I know WTF to change them to.
The Elektra project, in a post to LWN, linked from x.org, asserts that the configuration file format needs to change because
The xorg.conf file (as most Unix configuration files) was designed for human beings.
HA!