Ubuntu and screen resolution and MIT

[Jerry Feldman-2]

Apparently the new overhead projectors at MIT have problems with Linux,
but that is for a future discussion.
Last night, to get my display to work on the overhead, I changed the
resolution several times, and I am unable to restore my previous
resolution through the Display Preferences GUI. My previous resolution
was 1400x1050 60Hz. The Display Preferences wizard only gives me
1280x768. Fortunately my previous xorg.conf was saved, so I was able to
recover my previous settings, so my question is more rhetorical. After
copying my previous xorg.conf.2009.... file to xorg.conf, and restarting
the GUI the Display Preferences wizard now shows 1400x1050(4:3) 60Hz and
my screen resolution is back to normal.

While I generally know what I am doing under the covers, how would a
normal user be able to recover from a situation like last night where I
was trying to see if the overhead would work with my system.  In this
case my laptop is running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@...>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



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[Matthew Gillen]

On 10/22/2009 09:38 AM, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> Apparently the new overhead projectors at MIT have problems with Linux,
> but that is for a future discussion.
> Last night, to get my display to work on the overhead, I changed the
> resolution several times, and I am unable to restore my previous
> resolution through the Display Preferences GUI. My previous resolution
> was 1400x1050 60Hz. The Display Preferences wizard only gives me
> 1280x768. Fortunately my previous xorg.conf was saved, so I was able to
> recover my previous settings, so my question is more rhetorical. After
> copying my previous xorg.conf.2009.... file to xorg.conf, and restarting
> the GUI the Display Preferences wizard now shows 1400x1050(4:3) 60Hz and
> my screen resolution is back to normal.
>
> While I generally know what I am doing under the covers, how would a
> normal user be able to recover from a situation like last night where I
> was trying to see if the overhead would work with my system.  In this
> case my laptop is running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

I've actually found that the solution to most of my xorg problems nowadays is
to just blow away the xorg.conf file completely, and let it autoconfigure (it
gets slightly more complicated with the proprietary nvidia driver).

I've had problems forever with LCD screens not reporting their capabilities to
X properly, and so X stays conservative.

The correct steps for hooking up to external displays is, in my experience,
highly dependent on your video chipset.  At work I have one set of dell
laptops that will plug-n-play with an external monitor (ie boot up, then plug
in the monitor, restart X, and bam, it works), but my personal laptop, which
is also dell but has an Nvidia Quadro card, I have to go in to xorg.conf and
set up TwinView for it to work properly (using the proprietary drivers for the
latter, obviously).

Matt

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[Ryan Pugatch-4]

Matthew Gillen wrote:

> The correct steps for hooking up to external displays is, in my experience,
> highly dependent on your video chipset.  At work I have one set of dell
> laptops that will plug-n-play with an external monitor (ie boot up, then plug
> in the monitor, restart X, and bam, it works), but my personal laptop, which
> is also dell but has an Nvidia Quadro card, I have to go in to xorg.conf and
> set up TwinView for it to work properly (using the proprietary drivers for the
> latter, obviously).
>


With NVidia, I use the nvidia-settings app to manage it.

I have to manually add:

     Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfo" "true"

to my xorg.conf to make the driver send what Xfce needs to recognize
that I have two displays not one huge one.




Ryan Pugatch
Systems Administrator, TripAdvisor
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[jay-118]

My best guess would be that the system, for some reason, was still thinking the external display was active?  I've spent plenty of time in class rooms with projectors.  And I can tell you that normal users and external displays on laptops, rarely get along well.  Doesn't really matter what os we are talking about.  Would be nice if linux could beat windows in areas such as this.  But I think the major issue is dealing with the analog hole (assuming you were using vga?), and the hardware not properly recognizing  anlog connection.  Hopefully some day all laptops will be using hdmi, usb3 or what ever else for external video, and the systems will have a better standard of communication.  But with vga I suspect its more of a hardware and driver issue, than a proble in the os itself.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone with SprintSpeed

-----Original Message-----
From: Jerry Feldman <gaf@...>
Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2009 09:38:33
To: Boston Linux and Unix<discuss@...>
Subject: Ubuntu and screen resolution and MIT

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[DoctorMO]

Hmm,

In Ubuntu the xorg.conf file is slowly being deprecated in favour of
xrandr and proper hardware detection. The problem is that in order to
detect the capabilities of a monitor or screen, your computer needs:

1) Chipset drivers able to invoke i2c and ddr requests
2) A screen or monitor with such a chipset (most new ones do)
3) And for the monitor to not lie (which they do)
4) A chipset that doesn't screw up the results (some do)

So it's all a bag of crap because none of the chipset companies could
get their act together and the screen manufacturers don't pay enough
attention to data quality control.

The reason nvidia is such a pain in the neck is that nvidia doesn't
support randr, or kms, or any useful xorg service except the old stuff
like dri and i2c. Of course if you just using the nv driver, that has no
scanning support so it won't ever be able to see the screen settings.

Martin

On Thu, 2009-10-22 at 09:38 -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:

> Apparently the new overhead projectors at MIT have problems with Linux,
> but that is for a future discussion.
> Last night, to get my display to work on the overhead, I changed the
> resolution several times, and I am unable to restore my previous
> resolution through the Display Preferences GUI. My previous resolution
> was 1400x1050 60Hz. The Display Preferences wizard only gives me
> 1280x768. Fortunately my previous xorg.conf was saved, so I was able to
> recover my previous settings, so my question is more rhetorical. After
> copying my previous xorg.conf.2009.... file to xorg.conf, and restarting
> the GUI the Display Preferences wizard now shows 1400x1050(4:3) 60Hz and
> my screen resolution is back to normal.
>
> While I generally know what I am doing under the covers, how would a
> normal user be able to recover from a situation like last night where I
> was trying to see if the overhead would work with my system.  In this
> case my laptop is running Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss@...
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss

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[Jerry Feldman-2]

On 10/22/2009 10:20 AM, jay@... wrote:
> My best guess would be that the system, for some reason, was still thinking the external display was active?  
No, the system was not still recognizing the external, that I know for
sure.
> I've spent plenty of time in class rooms with projectors.  And I can tell you that normal users and external displays on laptops, rarely get along well.  Doesn't really matter what os we are talking about.  Would be nice if linux could beat windows in areas such as this.  But I think the major issue is dealing with the analog hole (assuming you were using vga?), and the hardware not properly recognizing  anlog connection.  Hopefully some day all laptops will be using hdmi, usb3 or what ever else for external video, and the systems will have a better standard of communication.  But with vga I suspect its more of a hardware and driver issue, than a proble in the os itself.
>  
Since the MIT classrooms have now overhead projectors and my laptop has
always worked before at MIT and since JABR's windows laptop worked using
VGA, It could be some other issue, such as driver.  In the past whenever
we had someone's laptop that would not display, the solution was to
change resolutio although previously by 1400x1050 used to work fine.
Maybe there is some software or firmware in the overhead that detects
the OS.

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@...>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



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[Jerry Feldman-2]

Fedora is also deprecating the xorg.conf. In my case it is a laptop with
an ATI Radeon chip and (about 5 years old). Apparently the Ubuntu
Display Preferences panel does update the xorg.conf file, but
fortunately renames the old one by date/time. Unfortuantely it is a
cut-throat industry, and none of the chip makers want to open source
their drivers out of fear that it will expose their chips.  I have an
Nvidia system at home. It also seems that these guys generally come out
with incompatible chips every few months.



On 10/22/2009 10:38 AM, Martin Owens wrote:

> In Ubuntu the xorg.conf file is slowly being deprecated in favour of
> xrandr and proper hardware detection. The problem is that in order to
> detect the capabilities of a monitor or screen, your computer needs:
>
> 1) Chipset drivers able to invoke i2c and ddr requests
> 2) A screen or monitor with such a chipset (most new ones do)
> 3) And for the monitor to not lie (which they do)
> 4) A chipset that doesn't screw up the results (some do)
>
> So it's all a bag of crap because none of the chipset companies could
> get their act together and the screen manufacturers don't pay enough
> attention to data quality control.
>
> The reason nvidia is such a pain in the neck is that nvidia doesn't
> support randr, or kms, or any useful xorg service except the old stuff
> like dri and i2c. Of course if you just using the nv driver, that has no
> scanning support so it won't ever be able to see the screen settings.
>  

--
Jerry Feldman <gaf@...>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846



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