how can i get widescren display on my new Dell 3010?

[Tim]

Ed Greshko:
>> You don't have a single monitor connected to 2 systems via a KVM do you?

Gary Kline:
> I do indeed; at one time I had 5 tower cases and three small CRT's;
> finally wound up with one 19" tube wired to a KVM switch. my goal is
> to get down to a server and a desktop.  and one backup server.

Automatic setting of screen resolution is done by polling the monitor
for it's supported modes.  With VGA/SVGA monitors, and probably others
as well, two wires are used for DDC.

When you put something in the middle, like a KVM, that often disrupts
that communication.  It can do that in several different ways:

      * Never connecting monitor DDC lines to the graphics card, and not
        providing any DDC information.

      * Only connecting the DDC lines when the monitor is selected to
        view that computer (which means it needs to be connected when
        the computer is polling the monitor - and it'll only do that as
        it sets up the graphic card, which may only be at boot up, or
        could be whenever X is started/restarted).

      * Providing bogus DDC information to the computer, pretending that
        the KVM is a monitor of a certain resolution, regardless of the
        resolutions of the monitor plugged into it.

It could well be to your advantage to connect the monitor directly to
the computer, get the graphics set up and working.  Then bypass
auto-configuration by setting in the parameters that work for you.

Other options could be to get a different KVM, one that doesn't mangle
DDC communications.

Of course, you'll still have problems if you have a monitor that doesn't
provide DDC (some still don't, such as connecting computers to some
domestic television sets).  Or, with a monitor that provides broken DDC.
Or when the table of resolutions for your monitor and graphic cards
don't have any suitable matches between them (horizontal and vertical
scan rates, as well as pixel clock frequencies).

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.6.9-2.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Dec 4 13:26:04 UTC 2012 x86_64

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