Widescreen Optimum Use

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org
Tue Dec 15 18:49:13 UTC 2009


| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| Some cards can't drive weird resolutions.  Or at least their drivers can't.
| 
| So if your resolution is 1680x1050, a lot of older cards (or at least
| their drivers) simply won't have a clue and may do 1280x1024 instead
| (which will look awful).  1440x900 seems even more of a problem for
| older cards.

Some drivers can only use resolutions that are supported by the BIOS.
I *think* "kernel mode setting" can get arround this.  KMS is a
feature being pushed into as many drivers as possible (with sometimes
painful failures).

Non-kernel modesetting was done (if I understand this correctly) by X
using an i386 emulator running BIOS modesetting code carefully.
That's why only BIOS-supported resolutions could be implemented.

But I may have this wrong.

Certainly the VGA driver (the generic fallback when X does not know
how to run the particular video chips) is limited to BIOS-supported
resolutions.

| From: Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org>

| The KVM should have nothing to do with it.  If the KVM lies about the
| monitor DDC then the KVM is shit and should be replaced with one that
| passes through the real DDC data.  Nothing else will ever work right.

My KVMs are old enough that the don't pass DDC/EDID.  They don't lie.

Interestingly, this has exposed a bug in the Savage driver.
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=491488
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