Xrandr Desktop Resize

[Simon]

I am having an (minor) issue yet again with setting my resolution in Kubuntu 14.04 under the xrandr command line. A simliar issue happened to me once before when I transitioned from 10.10 to 12.04. You can see the old thread here. The solution was to uninstall the fglrx Radeon driver. But I can't even install that driver with this new mesa and wrapper whatnot.

This is my desktop as it normally appears in the 1360x768 format. I have no issue with this.

This is my desktop as it normally appears in the 1024x768 format. I have no issue with this either.

This is my desktop as it normally appears in the 800x600 format. It doesn't fill the screen top to bottom.

This is my desktop as it normally appears in the 640x480 format. It it like looking at a postage stamp. I want to increase it (stretch it) to 1024x768. As in this example.

So far I am looking into fb, panning, and scale options without success. Also my graphics are not being accelerated at all. The "Info Center" reports; OpenGL 3D accelerator unknown, Kernel Module is unknown. To the best of my understanding the ATI Radeon drivers don't work well with 14.04.

Thanks for taking an interest.

[Simon]

Hello are you still there?
...

Well this is rather amusing... or not.

[B]$ sudo apt-get install fglrx[/B]
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 fglrx : Depends: dkms but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[B]$ sudo apt-get install dkms[/B]
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 dkms : Depends: gcc but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

[B]$ sudo apt-get install gcc[/B]
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 gcc : Depends: gcc-4.8 (>= 4.8.2-5~) but it is not going to be installed
       Recommends: libc6-dev but it is not going to be installed or
                   libc-dev
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

So I went to the AMD website and downloaded the deb packaged driver for 14.04 and this is what I got....





Hope to hear from you soon.

[Simon]

So far, this weekend I ran a variety of games to test the 3D differences between 12.04 an 14.04. They are clear as night and day. 12.04 out performs 14.04 on all the tests. At present if you are into any kind of 3D accelerated gaming, I would recommend sticking with 12.04.

I ran my Linux versions Portal 1 and Portal 2, also tested Borderlands 2. These games run under 14.04 but all the videos ran like they were skipping frames and the game play lagged. Portal 2 kept crashing at the most inopportune moments. I had to readjust (lower) the settings for them to play in 14.04.

Next I ran some older 3D games in both under the WINE overlay. This gave me strange results; Kubuntu 12.04 would reject some 2D games or have graphic issues with games where acceleration should not be an issue. Meanwhile playing games on 12.04 such as; Prince of Persia: Sands of Time and Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory worked great. Kubuntu 14.04 exhibited the ability to handle the 2D gaming (Original Starcraft) but failed on most of the 3D games; Morrowind, Psychonauts, GTA 3 and San Andreas.

Unless someone here has a rabbit in their hat, my opinion is 14.04 for work and internet surfing but games is much better on Percise 12.04 with the proprietary drivers.

[Simon]

In the event someone reads this looking for a solution to their 3D acceleration issues in 14.04. The solution is, no solution. The inexpensive GPU (ATI Radeon 5450HD) that I bought a while back has been discarded by the software upgrades. You either spend your money like a fool buying the latest and greatest hardware or you are left eating dirt. I am not pointing fingers, since so many have really failed this hardware. It seems that hardware more than a few years old is considered obsolete.

Oh screw it, I will point some fingers after all; AMD failed by not giving us an opensource driver. The software is not sold for profit, it is to support the hardware, so why make your cards less attractive to purchase by using proprietary drivers? The developers in general for catering to popular name brand and not looking into the broader spectrum of graphics processing. Sure there are a lot of people in the GPU business these days, but I am sure that Asus, Intel, and AMD are somewhere in the top ten? I can understand the commercial developers who work for Microsoft or Sony, they get told what to do and do their job loyal to the company. But Linux developers are not working for the company but doing it to better the OS itself. I guess it all goes back to the getting motivated by money issue and not trying to better the world around you.

Thanks for stopping in and looking this over, I hope in the future you find yourself a better solution than I did. I will continue using 12.04 until I actually need to buy a new box.

[oshunluvr]

Nice write-up. Sorry you're having such issues.

I have avoided AMD GPUs since the late 1990's when I ran into my first Catalyst mess - crashing, weird artifacts, etc. - this on a Windows machine. I started buying nVidia cards since then and have always been happy. That said: There are a couple low-end nVidia models that do not work well, but a little internet research reveals them. Even Intel video is way better supported in Linux than AMD. The problem in my view is their (AMDs) target audience. Those kids who play games where video response times can mean the difference between winning and losing - that's a Windows audience. Drivers aren't a profit center so paying developers for what is a minuscule audience (Linux) doesn't make sense to the bottom line.

I suppose I have had the luxury over the years of a substantial PC budget compared to the average hobbyist. I never buy the high-end units (I just don't need that much power and they charge stupid money for the top-o'-da-line) but I buy in the middle - trying to balance cost and performance. I'm not a massive gamer but I like my computers to be responsive and video is a big part of that. I recently upgraded my video card to an EVGA GTX780 from a pair of overclocked XFX GT8800s Alpha Dogs. Not because they were failing or under-performing, but because I wanted to be able to use a port other than DVI and that's all the old cards had. I now have DP and HDMI along with DVI ports allowing me to upgrade in the future to a nicer monitor. It's about twice as fast as the old cards.

I'd be more than happy to ship you my old nVidia cards if you cover the shipping!

[Simon]

Sorry I didn't see you post, since I left for 2 weeks on vacation.

Thanks for the offer, but I think I will be moving into a whole new box before too long. When I do, I plan to move back to Nvidia, not because I think it is the better GPU, but just because I know they are the GPU mafia. "The only way to play... or else!" I was looking at some boxes in the mall with about 4 times what I have and running less than $250. I do have the money in my wallet, when I choose to upgrade, I just don't want to rush in blindly and grab something that is so incompatible that Linux decides to commit ritualistic suicide. For example; I have seen many 64 bit systems available, but I am not sure how well some of my old apps will respond to the move from 32 to 64.

I will probably donate this old clunker to a little girl in my condo who keeps bugging me. I know she has a crush on me, it is sweet and all, but maybe if I set her up with a computer full of games, she will be too busy playing on the internet and whatnot.

[GreyGeek]

Just curious ... did you try to clear your broken packages that prevented the installation of fglrx and then retry?

The Acer I gave my grandson had an Intel 4000HD graphics chip. Under Trusty Tahr using Steam it played Portal 1 and Portal 2 just fine. I also installed Universe 2 Sandbox and it ran at about 40-50 fps IF I disabled background particles. I had given my older Acer to my 14 yo grandson and it wouldn't run 3D very well at all, so we switched computers in order to give him the fast box, since I rarely play any games except Minecraft. So, I am running my old Acer Aspire 7739 and it uses the "VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)", which is relatively slow. Stellarium gives me about 50 fps, but most other HR graphics doesn't work that well.