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ErwinP
April 28th, 2011, 10:47 PM
Hello

First of all, I'm totaly new to linux: this is in fact my first attempt to try to work on a linux distribution and (dispite my problem) I'm still excited to work with it! I got the taste from messing around with my android phone, so I know a little bit of the syntax of the commands that are used, but it is reaaaaly basic.


Now, my problem is my screen. I have two crt-screens ( inch and inch) which I can't manage to get working properly.
1. On a fresh install I had the problem that i couldn't get my refresh rate higher than 60 htz. It was very anoying to me (you could almost see the screen refreshing) and it made me get a headeach. I tryed installing different proposed drivers via the "system - drivers" (don't know if that is the right discription, I'm Dutch). The two proposed drivers didn't solve my problem.

2. I went to NVidia and download the Linux drivers for my graphical card (GeForce 8600 GT). I've gone trough a lot of trouble installing them: you can't install them when the Xserver is running, but commands like "init 1" or "gdm stop" made my system freeze (which is an other question: is this normal?). Eventualy I managed to install it by the "boot in safe mode"-option which I can choose when I boot my computer (I'm on a dual boot with windows 7).

3. Once the drivers installed it got worse. There was only one screen working and it worked only on a resolution of 640x480. It was just horifing. But with a lot of patient I managed to get one screen working at a resolution of 1024x768 and (again) not more then 60 htz, but the other screen was still stuck at 640x480. I kept playing around with it, edited my xorg.conf file manualy, broke it, restored it, etc etc. realy fun :D

4. This is the status ATM: both screens are working with twinview, both at a resolution of 640x480 (I can only select a lower one) and a refresh rate which I can't edit (stuck at "auto" and certainly way to low). I have an Nvidia driver which I don't like (it has made thing worse) but I can't unistall (I realy just don't know how to do that). Concluding, I'm a few weeks later, don't know what to try anymore and despiratly looking for help :)

I'm going to give my xorg.conf file at the end of this message.

If this is a very typicly question, then I excuse myself. I realy have tryed to look for it, but couldn't find a thing. And if I found something, it was explained on a level of experitise much higher then mine. So if you know something that I can try, please explane it to my like I'm you 6-year-old neigbourgh :)

Thank you in advance!!

Erwin

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 270.41.06 (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-07.nvidia.com) Mon Apr 18 15:15:00 PDT 2011

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig: version 270.41.06 (buildmeister@swio-display-x86-rhel47-07.nvidia.com) Mon Apr 18 15:15:12 PDT 2011

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "CRT-0"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce 8600 GT"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-1"
Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +640+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

3Miro
April 29th, 2011, 01:44 AM
I congratulate you on having the courage to mess with your system, this is the best way to learn.

In this particular case, you should be able to get higher resolution if you change the xorg.conf line to:

Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"

You should not manually install the Nvidia driver, you should have used the "Additional Drivers". Then you get Nvidia X Server Settings that will allow you to change many things.

The regular "Display" utility in Gnome often doesn't report correct things regarding the Nvidia cards, you should use Nvidia X Server Settings.

Look at the screenshot, there is a discrepancy between the regular utility and the Nvidia specific one. Nvidia driver does many strange things, so I trust its own utility. You should be able to see the difference on a CRT more easily (note that I am using XFCE, so my Display utility is slightly different).

If I were you, I would uninstall the Nvidia driver, delete xorg.conf call:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
then install the driver the "correct" way. Alternatively, you can just reinstall the entire thing.