Penguin Follower's Journal: Widescreen in Linux: Revisited

With all the travelling I've had to do for work lately, I hadn't had the time to try out the LCD with my linux box properly. While I still haven't bothered tweaking the console yet, I did play with X tonight. For whatever reason, I could not get the "nv" driver that ships with X to run the LCD correctly. I tried modelines after just setting "1680x1050" did no good. Eventually what I ended up doing was emerge the nvidia-drivers package and getting the binary driver from Nvidia going. :( Upon installing Nvidia's driver, just setting "1680x1050" worked magically (no modeline needed).

It should be noted, BTW, that the linux box is attached to a KVM that the widescreen is attached to via the regular SVGA cable. I have three systems on the KVM. The DVI cable goes to my desktop system with the SLI setup in it. Of course I can only use one input at a time, which is fine. I use the keyboard and mouse portion of the KVM cable for the 4th port on the KVM to my desktop system. I don't use the video portion and instead use the DVI link.

Anywho, back to the linux box... Well since I don't use any 3D on this box (it's a server) I'd rather use the nv driver since I've had the occasional lockup when pushing the nvidia driver playing games. And if you're asking yourself "if it's a server then why do you have X running?" it's mostly there in case I need X + a web browser for an emergency lookup. I use Window Maker for the window manager (lightning fast startup even on this old dual PIII 600MHz) and I run a few xterms + firefox (not really slow either). That's it for the GUI. No - I don't like using links (or lynx). :P

nv driver

[OctaneZ]

the nv driver only has certain "graced" (not the right word, but I can't think of the term they use) resolutions. The widescreen formats haven't made it into the driver yet. So if you want widescreen goodness you are stuck with the nVidia driver.

Re:

[Penguin Follower]

Well... that's not exactly what I wanted to hear. ;) But that is good information to know. Thanks.