As mentioned in the CV50 configuration section (13.1), some programs will use incorrectly sized fonts, or will even crash, if the XFree86 is given correct screen dimensions. Chief among those programs is `synaptic'. I ended up using aptitude instead. `Aptitude' is a console-based menu-style fronted to apt. No native RPMs exist for SuSE 9.1 at the time of writing, but I used an RPM from pbone.net designed for Fedora Core 2 (FC2).