Still no decent native widescreen support?

[thedevilsjester]

I had 5.10 installed and had to spend hours tracking down information and manually editing settings to get Kubuntu/Ubuntu to support my (pretty standard) 1680x1050 resolution.  I eventually had it working though.

That is until I upgraded to the new RC, using the described upgrade method.  Now I am again, back at a stretched screen resolution.  I tried the same methods I did before (manually adding modelines), even used my old xorg.conf file, and tried new methods that I read on these forums.  Yet still, no resolution fix.

I decided to just wipe it and do a fresh install (Kubuntu/Ubuntu has always been buggy with upgrades), and still the same results.

I had hoped that this new version would fix the #1 issue I have with Kubuntu/Ubuntu, but it hasnt.

Anyone have any ideas that I can try to get my resolution working?

Any info you need me to supply?

Video Card is nVidia Geforce FX 6800.

[Onetrack]

Re: Still no decent native widescreen support?

Hi I have an ATI 9550 running my 19" widescreen monitor, It was natively supported and all I had to do was go
K Menu--> System Settings --> Display --> Hardware (Administrator Mode) --> Then in the hardware box I set 16:9 in the dropdown that was set to 4:3, once I did that my monitor res was set properly to 1440x900

Easily taken care of without having to go into the xorg.conf file.

Hope this helps,
Onetrack

[thedevilsjester]

Re: Still no decent native widescreen support?

No, it doesnt help, I have already tried that multiple times.

The 'Detect' button gives bogus values for my monitor, so I select Flatscreen 1680x1050 from the Generic list, select widescreen, and restart X.

What I get then is the 'boxed' look. I have about 15% of my screen on top and another %15 on bottom that are black, like the screen is squished. And it sets itself to 1280x768 resolution no matter what I set it to, even if I remove all entries in xorg.conf except my desired resolution.

[FIXED] Ok, in the 'upgraded' version of kubuntu, I tried the kubuntu provided nvidia drivers (didnt work), and official newest drivers (wouldnt even boot X), however, I forgot to try the kubuntu provided nvidia drivers with the fresh install (assuming they would be as bogus as the upgraded ones). After doing all of the setups above AND switching to the provided nvidia drivers, it works.

Why cant the standard (non proprietary) drivers support this? Or better yet, why cant kubuntu install the commercial drivers out of the box? Or, atleast, if they require the user to actually choose to install them (licence reasons), then during installation have an option to do this.


Also, on another note, is there a way to set the bootsplash (and grub login) to a proper resolution?

[askrieger]

Re: Still no decent native widescreen support?

What's improper about the resolution of the bootsplash? I don't think you can change it, but I could be wrong. Do you mean the KDM login manager. You can change that in the kcontrol Login Manager screen.

The Grub screen is generated with a framebuffer so all you have to do is to use a vga cheat code (google/linux for it) in the /boot/grub/menu.lst after the words "ro quiet splash" in the stanza for your default login. That's also where you put noncosmetic options (like noapic, etc.)

[thedevilsjester]

Re: Still no decent native widescreen support?

There is no resolution option in the Login Manager.

Whats improper about the resolution? Well its is a 4:3 ratio resolution when my monitor only supports 16:9. (the bootloader, bootsplash, and login manager all suffer from this, its not until I actually log in that the resolution get fixed) So the text is extremly wide and blury (and makes an already ugly boot screen even worse).

Yeah I know about the vga code, but I cannot find one for 1680x1050. Know of any?

[odysseus]

Re: Still no decent native widescreen support?

This has been one of my frustrations with Dapper.  Over in the Mandrive/PCLOS world I came from, the LILO boot selection screen and the bootsplash could easily be set to fill my whole screen using the control center gui, easy as 3 clicks.  In Kubuntu it takes up a eye-wateringly small square in the middle, and grub is just plain ugly. C'mon, Kubuntu, it's not that hard...

As for the Nvidia widescreen resolution problems, also over in Mandriva/PCLOS world it was all set up automatically without any intervention on my part.  I've found in Kubuntu that the X config doesn't detect the monitor properly, so you have to manually select it to get the right resolutions, but the nvidia-glx drivers provided are not paying proper attention and won't go to full resolution, while a simple text edit to the nv driver gets the screen working perfectly.

Still work to do here guys...

John.

[greensh]

Re: Still no decent native widescreen support?

Well as you know, getting any of the propretiary display drivers to work properly on various Linux kernels has always been a sticky point  and to make matters much worse, since distros by default setup to auto start X (use KDM instead of using startx), when it fails, it seems like a complete showstopper.

Moreover, the whole patching of the kernel module business that must be done to install these drivers is just way too error prone and complicated that at the first sign of trouble, most Windows users just 'give up' on Linux and believe their cards aren't fully supported in Linux.

So I agree- this is the main problem, that is that display drivers do not just work correctly with X out of the box. But this is a problem with almost all distros, not just Kubuntu, in that tweaking the X.org after installing is required. If Linux is to ever become a mainstream desktop OS, this problem will have to be better resolved by the drivers packing good configuration GUI's that fully tweak the X.org files and updating these with every driver release.

If this file gets hosed and you cannot start X, make a backup of your X.org file and try using the dpkg-reconfigure command for your particular card.

On a positive note however, I've found that the Kubuntu built-in ATI driver is plenty fast with the auto setup Mesa OpenGL drivers.

Regarding the question of setting up the console boot up to support higher widescreen resolutions- I've never found the right vga= command (even back when I used LILO I used vga=791 but that was 4:3 aspect). This required enabling frame buffer support in the kernel to work, and since Kubuntu 6.06 has it configured as a module it should work, but I don't know the grub option for that.