Changing video cards

One of my videocards broke down down and I had to replace it. First the
tragic news, then the bad news and then the good news.

Tragic news: Have you ANY idea how terrible it is to have only two
1920x1200 monitors available instead of as well a third 1920x1080 one?

Bad news: XFCE works with XML file configuration. This ment that
although the two screens came up, the panels did not. They kept
crashing. The third panel needed DISPLAY 0.2 and that was not available
anymore.
Editing by hand was not an option due to the XML sillyness. So I ended
up making everything from sratch using
http://houghi.org/movie/index.php?movie=4KKF3XV

Good news: All works again. I did some minor investigation to be sure it
would. I looked in nvidea-settings what I had as hardware and that was
GeForce 8600 GT. I went to the store and told them to go to NVidia.com,
go to the driver download page, look up the driver for my current card
and tell me which one I could use.
That way I was sure that the driver would support the hardware and I
would not have to deal with two drivers.

So plugged it in, logged in as test user (to be sure) openend a terminal
and as root ran nvidia-settings. Added the third monitor, logged out and
in again and it worked.

In the whole process, the things that took most of the time was
verifyingthat it really was the videocard and not themobo. Also some
serious time spend in improving the airflow in my machine.

houghi
Remind me to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The
theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit
of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. -- Heinlein