Amazing linux stunts with 1920x1200 LCD monitor

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 10:11:31PM -0400, Walter Dnes wrote:
>   First of all, the bad news.  The monitor does *NOT* like "vga=6" in
> /etc/lilo.conf (and probably not in GRUB either).

Not sure what mode vga=6 is.

>   Yes, the LCD monitor does work "automagically".  I hooked up via the
> DVI connector and put it through its paces.  At first, it's scarey just
> setting resolutions in xorg.conf without modelines, but I did just that,
> setting a resolution of 1920x1200.  The text on Firefox is so crisp,
> it's like wow.  And I can put 2 Firefox windows side-by-each.
> 
> <MODE="KTel commercial> But wait, there's more </MODE>
> We all know that most lower resolutions suck on LCD monitors, because
> they're trying to interpolate partial pixels on top of a fixed physical
> resolution.  However, if you can divide vertical and horizontal
> resolutions exactly by whole numbers, there's no interpolation, although
> the image may start being blocky.  Dividing 1920 by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6
> yields 960, 640, 480, 384, and 320.  Similarly, dividing 1200 by 2, 3,
> 4, 5, and 6 yields 600, 400, 300, 240, and 200.  So the following
> resolutions...
> 
> 960x600 and 640x400 and 480x300 and 384x240 and 320x200
> 
> ...are interpolation-free.  The lower resolutions are great for playing
> videos from Youtube etal.
> 
> 
> <MODE="KTel commercial> But wait, there's even more </MODE>
> You don't necessarily have to combine 1920/3 with 1200/3 or 1920/4 with
> 1200/4.  Any valid X resolution with any valid Y resolution is OK.  Most
> possible combinations look ridiculous, but 640x600, 480x400, 384x300,
> and 320x240 are usable, indeed just right, for some videos.
> 
>   OK, so I have the following video modes...
> 1920x1200, 960x600, 640x600, 640x400, 480x400, 480x300, 384x300,
> 384x240, 320x240, and 320x200.  Now, how do I invoke X with the desired
> resolutions?  I start off with /etc/X11/xorg.conf, with only 1920x1200
> selected.  Then I make a bunch of copies like so...
> 
> m3000 X11 # ll -og *.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 20:43 320x200xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 20:51 320x240xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 19:51 384x240xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 20:31 384x300xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 19:50 480x300xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 20:28 480x400xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 19:49 640x400xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 20:22 640x600xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15165 Sep 13 19:48 960x600xorg.conf
> -rw-r--r-- 1 15171 Sep 13 21:31 xorg.conf
> 
>   Next, set the resolution in each copy to match the numbers in the
> filename (or else, you'll end up being very confused).
> 
>   Next, create the file ~/bin/x, with the following lines...
> 
> #! /bin/bash
> startx -- -nolisten tcp -config ${1}xorg.conf &
> 
>   If you invoke it as "x", with no parameters, it'll load using
> xorg.conf.  If you invoke it as "x abcxdef", it will try to start X
> using abcxdefxorg.conf.  Give it the appropriate prefix, and it'll start
> X with the corresponding conf file, e.g. "x 384x300" uses
> 384x300xorg.conf.

Or you could just list all the resolutions in the 'Modes' line of your
config and use control+alt+numpadplus/minus to zoom, or even better use
the x resolution switching program to change between them on the fly (I
think gnome and kde even have little tools to do so) so you don't even
have to restart X to do it.

--
Len Sorensen
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