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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: December 27th, 2025

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  • When you say it “never” gets past the logo, what value of never are you talking about? In my experience, the Dell BIOS can take a long, long time to scan the motherboard for hardware changes. Maybe let it sit at the logo for a lot longer than one might think it should take.

    Also, I’ve heard that this can happen when the CMOS battery dies.

    In any case, the fact that it gets as far as the logo is a good sign, in that the power supply, motherboard, CPU, video, and BIOS are all working.




  • I saw that post, and honestly, part of the issue is that the pain of messing with mode-lines in /etc/XF86Config and worrying about physically damaging your CRT monitor with out-of-spec frequencies was a very real thing 30 years ago. Hence, the idea that configuring displays on Linux is fraught and difficult has stuck around, even though it hasn’t been true since the advent of DDC, and multiple displays for most use-cases has been sorted out for at least the past 15 years. Non-Linux users will still occasionally talk about displays on Linux as if we were still editing mode-lines in vi.

    It’s a sore point, I guess I’m saying, and you poked it inadvertently. When I read the post, I just kind of smiled, because a few days before, I plugged the HDMI cable from a conference room display into my Thinkpad, and it lit up with an extension of my desktop. I started LibreOffice Impress, hit ‘F5’, and the presentation appeared on the big display, and the presentation notes on my laptop screen. (Actually, I was surprised and impressed at how smoothly it went.)

    It’s no surprise that issues remain here and there, though. Glad to hear that folks wanted to be helpful!