Kubuntu and projectors

[jordan83]

Hi all,

I am a fresh newcomer in the Kubuntu community.

I have installed kubuntu on my laptop and in these days I'm trying to understand how to make projectors work with kubuntu... In roughly 2 months I will be giving the MSc degree final presentation and it would be nice to have the issue solved by then.

Sadly, it appears that a lot of black magic and luck are required to succeed in this inexplicably hard challenge >

I own a Dell Inspiron 1520, mounting an NVidia 8600 GT video card.
So far I've been able to attach a projector and get it work through nvidia-settings at a 640x480 resolution which, needless to say, is far from being a satisfactory one.

I have read a lot of articles describing how to tackle this problem and usually the solution seems to reside in editing the xorg.conf file and adding some option which "might" get the thing to work (again, luck and black magic are involved at this point).

Now, in my case, I see two possible solutions and I would like to ask you guys whether you tried them already and whether you succeeded (in the latter case I beg you to post your voodoo recipe).

1)
currently I am using the nvidia-glx-new package which installs version 169.12 of the NVidia drivers. I see that the nvidia-glx-new-envy package is also available and it would install version 173.14 of the drivers. The questions are: what does that "envy" stand for? And why does it make me install about 10 more packages??!

gio@merlino:~$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new-envy
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
 debhelper dkms dpatch dpkg-dev gettext html2text intltool-debian libtimedate-perl nvidia-new-kernel-source-envy patch po-debconf
Suggested packages:
 dh-make curl debian-keyring gettext-doc diff-doc
Recommended packages:
 fakeroot patchutils build-essential devscripts kernel-package libmail-sendmail-perl libmail-box-perl
The following packages will be REMOVED:
 nvidia-glx-new
The following NEW packages will be installed:
 debhelper dkms dpatch dpkg-dev gettext html2text intltool-debian libtimedate-perl nvidia-glx-new-envy nvidia-new-kernel-source-envy patch po-debconf
0 upgraded, 12 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 14.2MB of archives.
After this operation, 29.0MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

I'm willing to try the upgrade, "maybe" the video card will be then able to catch the EDID and find the supported resolutions. But I'm not too optimistic...


2)
Try to modify the files as described here or use xrandr as suggested here.

I should also count the possibility of installing back Vista just for a presentation but I better not think about that

In few days I will have the chance to try and I will let you know the results.. In the meantime please let me know if you have any suggestions. I believe that my laptop and video card models are rather common out there, thus I hope that someone managed to succeed.

Have a nice day

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

This should answer the question about Envy and EnvyNG:

http://albertomilone.com/index.html

[jordan83]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

Hi Alberto,

thanks for the quick reply.
I see that Envy is a tool of your creation that aims to facilitate the process of installation of Ati/NVidia drivers... great job

But why is there a pre-packaged version of the drivers (nvidia-glx-new-envy) in the repository, then? Isn't it your tool the one supposed to retrieve the latest drivers directly from the manufacturer and install them?
ERGO... should one install Envy or is it just enough to install nvidia-glx-new-envy?
I'm a bit confused.

Anyway I've seen from this bug report that the drivers are going to be updated very soon, hence I could as well wait some days...

Thanks for the help

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

Thanks for the compliment Jordan -- but I can only dream of being as talented as Alberto M. I'm just a satisfied customer of his.

I have not tried the nvidia-glx-new-envy package -- I'm not sure what the deal with that is. I installed the envy-core package, and that's all you have to do. You can run it in GUI mode, but I normally get out of the X server entirely and shut it down, then run

sudo envyng -t

to run it in character mode, and it works great that way.

On my sidux system (same hardware platform) I've been running the Nvidia 177.13 Beta driver for several weeks now, and it seems fine on my 8800GTS. Maybe they are about to release it -- I assume a new Nvidia driver is coming out fairly soon.

[jordan83]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

Thanks for the compliment Jordan -- but I can only dream of being as talented as Alberto M. I'm just a satisfied customer of his.

woooooooooops....
Please pardon the mistake, these days I'm a bit stressed because of the thesis... :P

I have not tried the nvidia-glx-new-envy package -- I'm not sure what the deal with that is. I installed the envy-core package, and that's all you have to do. You can run it in GUI mode, but I normally get out of the X server entirely and shut it down, then run

sudo envyng -t

to run it in character mode, and it works great that way.

Ok, I'll try envy if they don't release an update to the current drivers soon.

On my sidux system (same hardware platform) I've been running the Nvidia 177.13 Beta driver for several weeks now, and it seems fine on my 8800GTS. Maybe they are about to release it -- I assume a new Nvidia driver is coming out fairly soon.

Have you ever tried to attach a projector? Any luck?

Thanks for the help

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

Oops - I see I wrote "envy-core" and that is not right. It is envyng-core.

The projector thing is not one I have done, although it's basically the same thing as switching to an external monitor. It is the same thing, actually. So, the trick is to get KDE and your keyboard in sync on the function of switching the video to the external connector. The challenge is that keyboards vary on how this function is implemented. I'd say search on "switch video output" and your model of laptop, on this forum and also Ubuntu forum. If you've got a spare monitor, you can hook that up to the output port for testing purposes. Once you figure it out, it will work the same for the projector.

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

You might be interested in this page on Nvidia Multi Monitor Support from the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki. The Wiki should be your first resort when you have a problem or question. If you can't find an answer there, come here.

[jordan83]

Re: Kubuntu and projectors

You might be interested in this page on Nvidia Multi Monitor Support from the Ubuntu Community Help Wiki.

I checked the ubuntu documentation resources but unfortunately there they assume that nvidia-settings works fine, which is not the case for me, since the NVidia driver does not detect the EDID correctly.

The Wiki should be your first resort when you have a problem or question. If you can't find an answer there, come here.

Ok, you're right.

Thanks, for the help.
As soon as I get close to a projector I will let you know my luck