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Changing screen resolution on laptops with KDE 10 messes up desktop display

Hello MakeUseOf members,

some users in my office are using laptops with OpenSUSE KDE 10 installed. They are encountering a problem when changing their screen resolutions. Normally they have 1024x768 configured. Sometimes they need to lower it to 800x600 (e.g. to connect their laptop to a projector).

When they switch back to 1024x768, their desktop display gets messed up. Their panel/taskbar gets shifted almost to the middle of the screen and the icons on the desktop get spread out all over. It's as if the whole desktop display zoomed out back to 1024x768 but didn't take the panel and the desktop icons with it. And thus far, the only way for users to fix this problem is to restart their laptops or log out and log back in. That is too slow and cumbersome.

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There are some known bugs with KDE related to screen resolution. Or it could be that the video card on some systems can't handle such screen resolution changes. Any help would be greatly appreciated, even if it is just a suggestion for quicker workarounds.

THANKS!

gbg

gbg
2011-06-15 10:19:00
YOU CAN NOW CLOSE THIS QUESTION DISCUSSION. I OPENED IT MYSELF AND DO NOT NEED IT ANYMORE. THERE IS NO DEFINITE SOLUTION, ONLY WORKAROUNDS. THANK YOU!!
Tina
2011-06-18 22:46:00
Thanks for the update gbg! Apologies for the the duplicate comment notifications, we were re-syncing our database and hence notifications for old articles went out again.
gbg
2011-06-15 10:13:00
Workarounds for this problemOnce you get the problem with the taskbar/panel in the middle of your messed-up screen, try one of the following:1. Logout of your session and login. You can hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and confirmyour logout on the window that appears. Then log back in as you normallydo with your userId and password.2. This procedure has several steps, but it's fairly simple.  1) Right-click on the taskbar and select "Configure Panel…". TheConfigure - KDE Panel will open.  2) Select the Menus section from the lefthand side. 3) At the top, toggle the "Start menu style:" option from KDE to SUSE orvice versa, and then click on the Apply button. 4) This should change the appearance of the taskbar AND place it back onthe bottom. To switch it back to how it looked like before, toggle theoption in step 3) back to its original value.3. This is actually the short version of workaround 2 described above and the fastest way so far.  1) Right-click on your K Menu icon which is on the lefthand side of yourtaskbar. 2) Select "Switch to SUSE Menu Style" or "Switch to KDE Menu Style".Which option appears depends on which style you have originally selectedfor your K Menu. 3) This should change the appearance of the taskbar AND place it back onthe bottom. To switch it back to how it looked like before, toggle theoption in step 2) back to its original value.
Johnathan TheTool Lane
2010-04-22 15:17:00
Starting with the simplest solutions first. Many people don't realizethat you have to restart the xserver in order to have the new resolution.Have you done this? You can restart the xserver by pressingctrl+alt+backspace.Hope this helps!
gbg
2011-06-15 10:16:00
"You can restart the xserver by pressingctrl+alt+backspace."This actually does work, in KDE you just have to hit backspace twice at the end of the sequence. The problem is it logs out the user from his session, so it's not very practical to solve this issue.