[shakna]

> Can't change login screen resolution (haven't seen a way to do this on any distro I've tried).

Really? You mention in another thread, you used Ubuntu. So you apparently didn't notice this [0] or this [1]?

The issue with this and complexity, is that login screen resolution is often handled by GRUB, not Linux.

Edit: In future you can drop into a commandline via Ctrl+Alt+F1

> Secondary drives require manual mounting (or doing it yourself at the command line).

Install usbmount if its connected by usb, and it'll be automatic.

If it's an internal drive, try gnome-volume-manager and it's a tickbox away. (Which is on quite a few distros by default).

[0] https://askubuntu.com/questions/794074/login-screen-resoluti...

[1] https://askubuntu.com/questions/73804/wrong-login-screen-res...

[flukus]

> Really? You mention in another thread, you used Ubuntu. So you apparently didn't notice this [0] or this [1]?

Neither of those solutions are user friendly are they?. You think an average person knows what grub is? I did come across the second one actually, but I have no idea if the solution is still relevant or not. I haven't seen anything to indicate what login manager I'm even running, where is this information displayed?

I'm talking about kdm/gdm or whatever is installed these days.

> If it's an internal drive, try gnome-volume-manager and it's a tickbox away. (Which is on quite a few distros by default).

It's there and configured to mount at startup. I keep most of my steam games on there. But if I log in and start up steam all the games are missing. If I navigate to the drive through the file manager and then start steam then it will find them properly. I have no idea what's going on but it doesn't appear to be mounting the drive at startup.

[shakna]

> Neither of those solutions are user friendly are they?

Neither is Windows. [0]

Changing a login screen is a bit of a technical thing, for technical reasons. Maybe it could be better, but at the moment, everyone sucks equally.

> I haven't seen anything to indicate what login manager I'm even running, where is this information displayed?

Most distros use systemd nowadays, so this is something that is becoming easier:

    cat /etc/systemd/system/display-manager.service | grep '/usr/bin'

Otherwise, it can vary system to system. Because things are very customisable.

> But if I log in and start up steam all the games are missing. If I navigate to the drive through the file manager and then start steam then it will find them properly.

The sure-fire fix for this is fstab, but that is a bit technical, I'll admit. I don't mind it much, because Windows can't mount my Linux drive, and OS X can have mounting issues as well when confronted with partitions it doesn't know.

I'm guessing the partition type is NTFS, so try ntfs-config.

[0] https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windows/en-US/ff...

[flukus]

Thanks. Systemd is one of those things that's changed since I last ran linux so I've got a bit of learning to do there. Turns out ubuntu gnome is running gdm, which isn't surprising.

> I'm guessing the partition type is NTFS, so try ntfs-config.

Ext4 actually, windows has never touched this machine :) I did the fstab thing (I think) on the last install but this is getting beyond my comfort zone.

> Neither is Windows. [0]

IME windows has always gone the other way, it will default to a lower resolution which is uglier but more usable. And the login menu is at the resolution of the last user. I did have an issue recently where windows 10 was constantly switching resolutions though, it was the first time I've been grateful for the dell/intel crapware that fixed it.

[shakna]

> Systemd is one of those things that's changed since I last ran linux so I've got a bit of learning to do there.

Not kidding. Its one of those things that can run half the system, so its unsurprising to not know much about it. However, at least we have a consistent way of managing things now.

> Ext4 actually, windows has never touched this machine :) I did the fstab thing (I think) on the last install but this is getting beyond my comfort zone.

Yeah, this might be getting difficult.

We used to have pysdm, but that's out of date now, and doesn't even support UUIDs, so it won't help.

I think gnome-disks (which is GUI-based), might have a chance at helping, but we're running into the technical side of Linux that I wish was easier to manage for the average person. (You can install gnome-disks with apt-get install gnome-disk-utility if it isn't already installed).

However, it might just have the same issues as the volume manager.

Wish I could help more, but I don't know enough about what's going wrong for you.

> And the login menu is at the resolution of the last user.

Thankfully, that's an easy thing to do with Linux, thanks to symbolic links. [0]

But I agree, defaulting to a lower res would be so very helpful in situations like this. Hopefully this story gets better soon.

[0] https://askubuntu.com/a/578153

[kevingadd]

Ubuntu's support for less-common screen resolutions is atrocious. Aside from its poor support for hi-dpi, if you try to install it when using low-res display hardware (like VirtualBox's emulated GPU) some of the important installer UI extends off the screen and cannot be seen or clicked.

[flukus]

The worst thing is that with Qt or Gtk there is zero excuse for this. Someone went out of there way to created a fixed width window.