How to use left-handed mouse in Xvesa?

[Don_Nadie]

Puppy 4.2.1 Live CD

My Hardware:

HP Omnibook XE2-DB
333 MHz Pentium II
256 MB RAM
4.6 GB hard drive
bootable CD-ROM
12.1" 800x600 LCD display, 24 bit (I think; HP says "24 million colors". 16 bit is 65K colors, 24 bit is 16M colors, 32 bit is 4G colors; you tell me!)
Silicon Motion Inc. LynxE SVGA graphics card, 2 MB RAM

The problem I'm about to describe doesn't occur with Debian, Knoppix or Damn Small Linux.

If I choose Xvesa during the boot dialog on the live CD, my display is fine at 800x600x24 but I can't choose a left-handed mouse because Puppy says X.org is required. I'm obviously left-handed.

If I choose Xorg during the boot dialog and go with 800x600x24, my display looks fine until about the time the widgets appear, at which time the far right side of my screen shows a graded left-to-right dark vertical bar which remains everafter. I can choose a left-handed mouse. My display may also get screwed up with green vertical bars that have some white parts when I shut down, at which time the notebook hangs.

If I choose Xorg, then Test 800x600x24, it reports 35.16 KHz horiz. freq. and 56.25 Hz refresh. If I accept that, I still get the dark bar, but I can shutdown OK. If I choose Xorg, Test ... and Tweak the refresh rate to 60 Hz (what I think I've got), it reports 37.88 KHz horiz. freq. and 60.32 Hz refresh. If I accept that, I get the dark bar and I can shut down OK.

I'm no coder, but since GNU/Linux is open source, why can't Puppy use the boot-time code in other distros where you just say

fb800x600 knoppix blah blah blah
or
fb800x600 debian blah blah blah
or
fb800x600 dsl blah blah blah

and everything goes great as well as allowing you to choose a left-handed mouse?

Puppy looks really cool. I've got DSL frugal installed on my HD now, but DSL may possibly be dead due to personnel conflicts. I'd like to move to Puppy, but it's the only distro I've tried so far that won't set my display correctly and let me make my mouse left-handed.

Thanks for reading such a long-winded post.

[Sit Heel Speak]

Desktop -> Wallpaper set backdrop image --> Sidebar --> Both --> choose Transparent--semi.png on both sides, it's all the way down at the bottom. Apply, Quit. Reboot. Wuh-lahh, no more dark bar.

Now I'm lost in the wind, what was your question? --35.16 kHz (***earlier said Hz, my mistake, sorry***) horiz. freq. and 56.25 Hz vertical is correct for that netbook, anything much off that is horsing the video chipset.

Add "(solved)" to the title if this solves it. --hth, shs

[Don_Nadie]

Doesn't help, but rather makes things much worse. Now only the center 1/3rd of the desktop is normal, with two dark bands, one on each side about 1/3rd of the screen width.

I've melted some solder and wrapped some wire in my life and was very disappointed that no moderator or anyone else who read this post was willing to step up to the plate and discredit the claim that horizontal frequencies should be in Hertz rather than Kilohertz. Glad you realized that was wrong. I was beginning to wonder if anyone who reads the Puppy forums knows very much at all. Bad settings can destroy a video card, as you said.

Also still wondering why Puppy has to go through the Xorg setup screen while Knoppix, Debian, DSL and I don't know how many other distros get going correctly on my silicon fossil with VGA=788 on the boot command line or the cheat code fb800x600.

I use a mouse right-handed when I'm on other people's PCs but don't see why I should have to do it on my own when all the aforementioned distros both give me a hassle-free X setup and let me set my mouse to left-handed.

Since I'm running Puppy as a Live CD on a dinosaur with Damn Small Linux installed, I'd have to go with some persistence to save whatever settings you suggest in order to get the desktop right. This isn't the case with other distros' Live CDs. They just get the settings right at boot time and don't need persistence.

I like the look of Puppy and originally thought of at least a frugal install, but I won't do it till the display is right and I can set my mouse left-handed.