4 ms·

Yup, things are so much better now that they just work. Except when they don't, because now it's harder to do anything about it. I've lost count of the number

Yup, things are so much better now that they just work. Except when they don't, because now it's harder to do anything about it. I've lost count of the number of Linux machines I've seen that won't offer the correct resolution for a particular monitor (typically locked to 1024x768 on a widescreen monitor). I don't know whether the problem's with Linux, Xorg, crappy BIOSes or crappy monitors - but even now I occasionally resort to an xorg.conf file to solve such issues.

jandrese 2y ago
Do you work with a lot of KVMs? Directly plugged monitors usually just work thanks to EDID info, but cheap KVMs frequently block that signal and cause problems. It's rare for a monitor plugged directly into the computer to have problems these days, even on Linux.
- robinsonb5 2y ago
  No KVMs involved - but three of the machines I have in mind (not identical, but all running the same version of Linux Mint) have two monitors attached, one of which is OK and the other isn't. (Not mine - so I haven't put any time into trying to solve it yet.) Another machine - which is mine - used to have a 19" VGA monitor attached which worked happily at 1280x1024 for months, then one day something got updated and it wouldn't do anything beyond 1024x768 after that until I resorted to an xorg.conf file.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    Also, on modern machines you almost never want to be editing the xorg.conf. xrandr took over the responsibility of doing resolution stuff. To fix the resolution on a modern distro the sequence is something like this (use your actual monitor dimensions and refresh rate of course): % cvt 1920 1080 60 Copy everything past "Modeline" into a cut buffer. % xrandr --newmode <paste the line from above> Keep a note of the first line in the field, it will look something like "1920x1080_60", this is the "mode name" Next, find out what your monitor is named: % xrandr | grep ' connected ' It will be HDMI-1 or VGA-1 or something like that, this is your "interface name". Now add the mode to your monitor specification: % sudo xrandr --addmode <interface name> <mode name> Finally, switch to the new mode: % xrandr --output <interface name> --mode <mode name> This is the modern way of doing it. Manually setting up modelines in the xorg config file is oldschool.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      That's very good info. > For a long time the X Window System had a reputation for being difficult to configure. But apparently some things never actually change. :)
      - jandrese 2y ago
        You want arcane, try doing the same thing in Windows when it can't detect your monitor properly and doesn't like your video card.
        ssl-3 2y ago
        Thanks. Now I'll have nightmares of the time I spent trying to help a friend get the 32" TV they won in a contest (back when an LCD of that size was still both unusual and expensive) to work at proper native resolution in Windows. Windows really wanted it to be 1080p, and the TV supported this input, but it was a blurry mess. It was advertised as 720p, and the TV supported this input as well, but that was also a blurry mess. It actually had a physical vertical resolution of something like 760 lines, which was not one of the modes that it offered up over DDC as an option for whatever was driving it to use. Fun times. (I did eventually get 1:1 pixel mapping, but IIRC I had to give him a different video card for this to happen.)
        derefr 2y ago
        What Linux solves through configuration, Windows solves by having everything you buy come with its own model-specific drivers that burn the needed configuration into the .INI + .DLL. Windows "not liking your video card" is presumably because you either aren't using the right driver, or because Windows doesn't like your driver — i.e. the monitor is old enough that there's no version of that driver for current Windows.
      - matttproud 2y ago
        Author of article: Honestly, it is pretty easy to configure the X Server these days; very little manual intervention has been required since the mid-2000s if you want to accept the defaults, which largely are correct and good. I am mindful about what families of hardware I buy, though, but that's not too restrictive. The only piece of hardware of mine that needs manual configuration is the Logitech TrackMan Marble, but that's only because I operate the mouse with a right-handed layout with my left hand. Interestingly the TrackMan Marble does not work with its full feature set in Wayland (core example: the buttons to enable horizontal/vertical panning of a wide or tall document), and this is not exotic hardware. How configuration is being handled in the X to Wayland conversion is a mystery to me. Some of it is happening in libinput (I think), but other parts aren't. This is one of the reasons I am deferring the Wayland migration for as long as I can. Configuring software stack that runs (think: what the ~/.xsession file manages) is the place I've invested most of my effort, and that's purely about aesthetics and behavior: DPI, font rendering settings, window manager, etc. And this is pretty easy to do these days, because most of these things can prototyped and altered in an existing X session (keeping a tight edit-run loop). And both of these situations can be alleviated by storing critical configuration files (e.g., ~/.xsession or the X Server configuration) under version control. There's no point in having to invest in reconfiguration of the same hardware these days when there's cheap version control and storage.
- internet101010 2y ago
  KVMs do tend to cause issues, especially when it comes to power management and waking from sleep. However, just two weeks ago I had issues with Debian when connecting directly to a monitor. Booting from the live image with a Nvidia GPU resulted in 1024x768 garbage. Surely the installer will take care of that and the open drivers will be sufficient. Surely. Nope. I had to reinstall and the option to add the proprietary repository was not as obvious nor as emphasized as it should have been. It almost seemed like an intentional snub at Nvidia. I bailed for other desktop-related issues and ran back home to another distro. But maybe Debian doesn't want to focus on desktop users and that's fine - they can continue to rule their kingdom of hypervisor cities filled with docker containers. The world needs that too.
  - KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
    > It almost seemed like an intentional snub at Nvidia. I don't think anybody can come up with better intentional snubs at Nvidia than the Nvidia itself. When it comes to their older graphics hardware, their drivers just refuse to work with newer kernels. GPU was capable to draw windows and play videos for a decade, but then, after a kernel update, it doesn't even show 1024x768 "garbage". Just black screen. So effectively, buying Nvidia to use with Linux equals to buying hardware with expiration date.
    - jandrese 2y ago
      Once a card is old enough you might have to switch to the Nouveau driver instead, which is probably fine since using a card that old on a modern machine suggests you aren't that interested in games or VR.
      - derefr 2y ago
        > which is probably fine since using a card that old on a modern machine suggests you aren't that interested in games or VR I think a more correct assumption is that you're likely interested in running games of at most the era the computer was purchased in. It'd be a shame if your 7-year-old GPU going out-of-support with a distro upgrade, meant that you suddenly become unable to run the 7-year-old games you've been happily playing up until that point.
- josefx 2y ago
  > Directly plugged monitors usually just work thanks to EDID info If you are dealing with consumer grade stuff that is sold a million times sure. I stopped keeping track of how often some special purpose/overpriced piece of display hardware had bad EDID information that made it glitch out.
  - KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
    > If you are dealing with consumer grade stuff that is sold a million times sure. It's not a sure thing. Out of a bunch of mass produced monitors sharing the same model number and specs, some may still malfunction not reporting the correct EDID.
LtWorf 2y ago
> I've seen that won't offer the correct resolution for a particular monitor (typically locked to 1024x768 on a widescreen monitor). I've been using linux for over 20 years, Xorg for most of that time, and I've never had any issues with screen resolution.
- robinsonb5 2y ago
  I'm genuinely pleased to hear that it works for you. Unfortunately that doesn't make the problem I'm having go away! (On two of the machines I have in mind the issue is with a second monitor - that may well have something to do with it.)
  - LtWorf 2y ago
    I've been using 2 monitors on several machines, on several occasions. And gave plenty of presentations using projectors.

jandrese 2y ago

Do you work with a lot of KVMs? Directly plugged monitors usually just work thanks to EDID info, but cheap KVMs frequently block that signal and cause problems. It's rare for a monitor plugged directly into the computer to have problems these days, even on Linux.

robinsonb5 2y ago
No KVMs involved - but three of the machines I have in mind (not identical, but all running the same version of Linux Mint) have two monitors attached, one of which is OK and the other isn't. (Not mine - so I haven't put any time into trying to solve it yet.) Another machine - which is mine - used to have a 19" VGA monitor attached which worked happily at 1280x1024 for months, then one day something got updated and it wouldn't do anything beyond 1024x768 after that until I resorted to an xorg.conf file.
- jandrese 2y ago
  Also, on modern machines you almost never want to be editing the xorg.conf. xrandr took over the responsibility of doing resolution stuff. To fix the resolution on a modern distro the sequence is something like this (use your actual monitor dimensions and refresh rate of course): % cvt 1920 1080 60 Copy everything past "Modeline" into a cut buffer. % xrandr --newmode <paste the line from above> Keep a note of the first line in the field, it will look something like "1920x1080_60", this is the "mode name" Next, find out what your monitor is named: % xrandr | grep ' connected ' It will be HDMI-1 or VGA-1 or something like that, this is your "interface name". Now add the mode to your monitor specification: % sudo xrandr --addmode <interface name> <mode name> Finally, switch to the new mode: % xrandr --output <interface name> --mode <mode name> This is the modern way of doing it. Manually setting up modelines in the xorg config file is oldschool.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    That's very good info. > For a long time the X Window System had a reputation for being difficult to configure. But apparently some things never actually change. :)
    - jandrese 2y ago
      You want arcane, try doing the same thing in Windows when it can't detect your monitor properly and doesn't like your video card.
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        Thanks. Now I'll have nightmares of the time I spent trying to help a friend get the 32" TV they won in a contest (back when an LCD of that size was still both unusual and expensive) to work at proper native resolution in Windows. Windows really wanted it to be 1080p, and the TV supported this input, but it was a blurry mess. It was advertised as 720p, and the TV supported this input as well, but that was also a blurry mess. It actually had a physical vertical resolution of something like 760 lines, which was not one of the modes that it offered up over DDC as an option for whatever was driving it to use. Fun times. (I did eventually get 1:1 pixel mapping, but IIRC I had to give him a different video card for this to happen.)
      - derefr 2y ago
        What Linux solves through configuration, Windows solves by having everything you buy come with its own model-specific drivers that burn the needed configuration into the .INI + .DLL. Windows "not liking your video card" is presumably because you either aren't using the right driver, or because Windows doesn't like your driver — i.e. the monitor is old enough that there's no version of that driver for current Windows.
    - matttproud 2y ago
      Author of article: Honestly, it is pretty easy to configure the X Server these days; very little manual intervention has been required since the mid-2000s if you want to accept the defaults, which largely are correct and good. I am mindful about what families of hardware I buy, though, but that's not too restrictive. The only piece of hardware of mine that needs manual configuration is the Logitech TrackMan Marble, but that's only because I operate the mouse with a right-handed layout with my left hand. Interestingly the TrackMan Marble does not work with its full feature set in Wayland (core example: the buttons to enable horizontal/vertical panning of a wide or tall document), and this is not exotic hardware. How configuration is being handled in the X to Wayland conversion is a mystery to me. Some of it is happening in libinput (I think), but other parts aren't. This is one of the reasons I am deferring the Wayland migration for as long as I can. Configuring software stack that runs (think: what the ~/.xsession file manages) is the place I've invested most of my effort, and that's purely about aesthetics and behavior: DPI, font rendering settings, window manager, etc. And this is pretty easy to do these days, because most of these things can prototyped and altered in an existing X session (keeping a tight edit-run loop). And both of these situations can be alleviated by storing critical configuration files (e.g., ~/.xsession or the X Server configuration) under version control. There's no point in having to invest in reconfiguration of the same hardware these days when there's cheap version control and storage.
internet101010 2y ago
KVMs do tend to cause issues, especially when it comes to power management and waking from sleep. However, just two weeks ago I had issues with Debian when connecting directly to a monitor. Booting from the live image with a Nvidia GPU resulted in 1024x768 garbage. Surely the installer will take care of that and the open drivers will be sufficient. Surely. Nope. I had to reinstall and the option to add the proprietary repository was not as obvious nor as emphasized as it should have been. It almost seemed like an intentional snub at Nvidia. I bailed for other desktop-related issues and ran back home to another distro. But maybe Debian doesn't want to focus on desktop users and that's fine - they can continue to rule their kingdom of hypervisor cities filled with docker containers. The world needs that too.
- KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
  > It almost seemed like an intentional snub at Nvidia. I don't think anybody can come up with better intentional snubs at Nvidia than the Nvidia itself. When it comes to their older graphics hardware, their drivers just refuse to work with newer kernels. GPU was capable to draw windows and play videos for a decade, but then, after a kernel update, it doesn't even show 1024x768 "garbage". Just black screen. So effectively, buying Nvidia to use with Linux equals to buying hardware with expiration date.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    Once a card is old enough you might have to switch to the Nouveau driver instead, which is probably fine since using a card that old on a modern machine suggests you aren't that interested in games or VR.
    - derefr 2y ago
      > which is probably fine since using a card that old on a modern machine suggests you aren't that interested in games or VR I think a more correct assumption is that you're likely interested in running games of at most the era the computer was purchased in. It'd be a shame if your 7-year-old GPU going out-of-support with a distro upgrade, meant that you suddenly become unable to run the 7-year-old games you've been happily playing up until that point.
josefx 2y ago
> Directly plugged monitors usually just work thanks to EDID info If you are dealing with consumer grade stuff that is sold a million times sure. I stopped keeping track of how often some special purpose/overpriced piece of display hardware had bad EDID information that made it glitch out.
- KETHERCORTEX 2y ago
  > If you are dealing with consumer grade stuff that is sold a million times sure. It's not a sure thing. Out of a bunch of mass produced monitors sharing the same model number and specs, some may still malfunction not reporting the correct EDID.

LtWorf 2y ago

> I've seen that won't offer the correct resolution for a particular monitor (typically locked to 1024x768 on a widescreen monitor). I've been using linux for over 20 years, Xorg for most of that time, and I've never had any issues with screen resolution.

robinsonb5 2y ago
I'm genuinely pleased to hear that it works for you. Unfortunately that doesn't make the problem I'm having go away! (On two of the machines I have in mind the issue is with a second monitor - that may well have something to do with it.)
- LtWorf 2y ago
  I've been using 2 monitors on several machines, on several occasions. And gave plenty of presentations using projectors.