Management of xorg.conf

[pwabrahams]

How does Kubuntu (9.10) handle the management of xorg.conf? It isn't in the usual place, /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and locate doesn't even show some other location for it. I guess that the Nvidia stuff might also be involved somehow. (This is a different question from how to understand the actual contents of xorg.conf). Is there a writeup about this somewhere?

[skunk]

Re: Management of xorg.conf

The latest versions of X11 do not require a xorg.conf since it has enough brains to handle the normal cases. If you actually need a xorg.conf file because of driver specifics etc, then it should be placed in the "normal place" /etc/X11/xorg.conf

[GreyGeek]

Re: Management of xorg.conf

And, adding to what Skunk said, there is a "failsafe" file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.failsafe which you can copy to /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add driver configuration and other options to it IF you need to make adjustments.

[pwabrahams]

Initial resolution from live CD

.X11 doesn't seem to have enough brains to pick decent resolutions. There have been lots of posts in this forum about the problem of people not being able to get their screen resolution above 800x640. It happened to me, which is why I got interested in this question. I finally got by the problem with a dirty trick: I copied xorg.conf from a working OpenSuSE system on the same machine and installed it using nvidia-xconfig. So maybe there's a bug here: the inability of X11 to generate higher screen resolutions when they are appropriate.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Management of xorg.conf

That's when ModLines come in handy:

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Bigname"
ModelName "BestModel"
ModeLine "1680x1050" 146.2 1680 1784 1960 2240 1050 1053 1059 1089
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

You have to generate the modlines from the monitor itself. You can do that with gtf, including the sync rates:

gtf 1600 900 60

# 1600x900 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 55.92 kHz; pclk: 119.00 MHz
Modeline "1600x900_60.00" 119.00 1600 1696 1864 2128 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync

You can get the ysize, xsize and frequency from your monitor documentation.

[pwabrahams]

Re: Management of xorg.conf

That's when ModLines come in handy:

<snip>

You have to generate the modlines from the monitor itself. You can do that with gtf, including the sync rates:

gtf 1600 900 60

# 1600x900 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 55.92 kHz; pclk: 119.00 MHz
Modeline "1600x900_60.00" 119.00 1600 1696 1864 2128 900 901 904 932 -HSync +Vsync

You can get the ysize, xsize and frequency from your monitor documentation.

I wish I had known about gtf. But for the typical laptop, the frequency information may be hard to come by.

My essential point remains: resolutions ought to work out of the box, as they do for most systems including, if I remember right, older versions of Kubuntu. Or at least it should be possible to adjust them from System Settings. If that's not the case, then Kubuntu becomes inhospitable for unsophisticated users.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Management of xorg.conf

You mention the use of nvidia-xconfig which suggests that you are using the proprietary NVIDIA driver. I use it, too, and it works well, but it does require a properly setup xorg.conf, which the VESA driver, and the new nouveau driver included in Lucid, do not.

I agree that video drivers are one of the sore points with Linux. Part of that is the fault of manufacturers that don't provide high quality linux drivers (or any at all) for their products. That's not the case with NVIDIA -- they provide a very high quality driver, but you do have to install it, either from the website, or by installing the nvidia ppa and the drivers through apt-get, and you do have to configure it.

Video does work -- at least on my system, "out of the box" with k/ubuntu's provided software. But if you want the better quality drivers specific for your card, yes, you do have to do some installing.

[pwabrahams]

Nvidia integration

The Nvidia video drivers are quite adequate -- as you note, they are of high quality. The problem lies in how they are integrated into Kubuntu -- and there are a lot of people who have Nvidia hardware. Kubuntu already does a lot of the necessary integration -- it's too bad that the people who work on this didn't quite finish the job. In my experience, earlier Kubuntu releases got it right. These resolution problems seem to be new to 9.10. I don't remember everything that went on when I used the live CD to install Kubuntu 9.10, but as I remember, the Nvidia drivers got installed by default. The problems, such as they are, lie purely in the handling of xorg.conf.