Hi, I've got a 6600GT AGP card in my desktop and been trying to get it to do dual display LCD + TV (for a while) Low-Def TV is PAL-Aus On boot it shows the text screen on both the LCD and the TV, but when I startx the TV goes strange (nothing that looks like hires graphics) To make matters worse I just got a 1680x1050 screen and had to up my kernel (2.6.20-1.2944.fc6) and upgrade xorg server (xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.1.1-47.8.fc6) to get that to work Preferably as 2 screen rather than duplicating one screen on both (since one is 1680x1050 and the TV is WAY smaller than that) Can I do that with the nv driver or do I need the driver from nVidia? Has someone got a sample xorg.conf that works like this? I've tried all sorts of options with the nv driver but have been unable to get it to work since I'm not sure exactly how xorg.conf should look or even if that works with the nv driver, and I can't seem to find a clear example googling either -Thanks for any help
The 'nv' X driver doesn't support TV-out. You'll need to use the nvidia X driver.
On 4/27/07, Andrew rhml2@k1k2.com wrote:
Hi, I've got a 6600GT AGP card in my desktop and been trying to get it to do dual display LCD + TV (for a while) Low-Def TV is PAL-Aus On boot it shows the text screen on both the LCD and the TV, but when I startx the TV goes strange (nothing that looks like hires graphics) To make matters worse I just got a 1680x1050 screen and had to up my kernel (2.6.20-1.2944.fc6) and upgrade xorg server (xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.1.1-47.8.fc6) to get that to work Preferably as 2 screen rather than duplicating one screen on both (since one is 1680x1050 and the TV is WAY smaller than that) Can I do that with the nv driver or do I need the driver from nVidia? Has someone got a sample xorg.conf that works like this? I've tried all sorts of options with the nv driver but have been unable to get it to work since I'm not sure exactly how xorg.conf should look or even if that works with the nv driver, and I can't seem to find a clear example googling either -Thanks for any help
Andrew writes:
Can I do that with the nv driver or do I need the driver from nVidia?
You need to use Nvidia's closed-source binary driver. Nvidia refuses to disclose the technical specification of their graphics hardware, as the result the free nv driver does not support all features of most Nvidia cards.
Yes I know that it is closed source and that nv doesn't support all card options. I used to use nVidia's drivers many years ago ... when I first found out about them ... (checked my nVidia directory ... July 19 2002: driver 2960)
My question was simply which driver I need coz I thought the nv driver might handle it and I wouldn't have to change drivers - which someone has already answered. So when I next can stop X, I'll swap over.
As for nVidia: That is their choice - why force your opinion on them? They provide linux drivers for free (and have for years) - better than many companies ... Do you provide the linux community with something as good as they do that is used by so many people for free? ... Reading your comment seems to be very critical of nVidia. Though, of course, I could have read your comment wrong ...
On Fri, 2007-04-27 at 17:48 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Andrew writes:
Can I do that with the nv driver or do I need the driver from nVidia?
You need to use Nvidia's closed-source binary driver. Nvidia refuses to disclose the technical specification of their graphics hardware, as the result the free nv driver does not support all features of most Nvidia cards.
Andrew writes:
As for nVidia: That is their choice - why force your opinion on them?
You've got it the other way around. They are the ones who are trying to foist everything what's wrong with non-free closed software on the free software community. They are the ones who are taking advantage of the free software community, taking what they need and refuse to give anything back.
If you want to run closed, non-free binary software, there are plenty of other operating systems you can choose, which will give you as many non-free binary blobs as you wish. But that's not what Linux is all about.
They provide linux drivers for free (and have for years)
Only for one specific definition of "free".
- better than many companies ...
I wouldn't say that.
Do you provide the linux community with something as good as they do that is used by so many people for free? ...
I would give a ballpark estimate of around million people worldwide who are using my free software. I don't know how that stacks up to the Nvidia's fan club.
Reading your comment seems to be very critical of nVidia. Though, of course, I could have read your comment wrong ...
Nope, you've got it pretty much nailed.
On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 23:13 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Andrew writes:
As for nVidia: That is their choice - why force your opinion on them?
You've got it the other way around. They are the ones who are trying to foist everything what's wrong with non-free closed software on the free software community. They are the ones who are taking advantage of the free software community, taking what they need and refuse to give anything back.
If you want to run closed, non-free binary software, there are plenty of other operating systems you can choose, which will give you as many non-free binary blobs as you wish. But that's not what Linux is all about.
They provide linux drivers for free (and have for years)
Only for one specific definition of "free".
What are nVidia taking? They are giving everything necessary to use their cards on Linux but not have to pay money for the drivers. How are they asking you to make your software non-free? Got a copy of that email from them? ... And yes I know what your answer is going to be ... should I already rebut it? You think that since their software cannot be included in a 'your definition free' distribution that it matters? Why?
We all have definitions of free. RedHat linux ... is that free? No - you must pay for it and they claim copyright over it and also consider it a violation of their agreement to have their distribution without paying money for it. That's not free either in the 'money' definition of the word.
- better than many companies ...
I wouldn't say that.
Why? There are many companies who do not ever offer linux drivers, nor support developers to produce them. So the word 'many' seems to fit QUITE well IMO.
Do you provide the linux community with something as good as they do that is used by so many people for free? ...
I would give a ballpark estimate of around million people worldwide who are using my free software. I don't know how that stacks up to the Nvidia's fan club.
You think courier mail is that popular? I have no idea :P
Reading your comment seems to be very critical of nVidia. Though, of course, I could have read your comment wrong ...
Nope, you've got it pretty much nailed.
Meh - feel free to reply once more - but I shall not continue this since it has been debated before. Most people do not have a middle ground - they expect everyone to do what they want them to do ... coz they are 'right' It happens everywhere else - why not here also :P
On Sun, 2007-04-29 at 20:35 +1000, Andrew wrote:
What are nVidia taking?
Your money, when you bought some of their hardware.
They are giving everything necessary to use their cards on Linux but not have to pay money for the drivers.
Not when it doesn't work, and see the above.
And when it doesn't work, your only recourse is to buy another card. Are you going to risk buying another one from them that mightn't work, or go for something from somewhere else.
Andrew writes:
On Sat, 2007-04-28 at 23:13 -0400, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
If you want to run closed, non-free binary software, there are plenty of other operating systems you can choose, which will give you as many non-free binary blobs as you wish. But that's not what Linux is all about.
They provide linux drivers for free (and have for years)
Only for one specific definition of "free".
What are nVidia taking?
Your money.
They are giving everything necessary to use their cards on Linux but not have to pay money for the drivers.
You certainly paid something for their hardware.
How are they asking you to make your software non-free?
That's not what I said. That's a fairly-well constructed strawman you've just built.
Got a copy of that email from them? ... And yes I know what your answer is going to be ...
Ok, then you should've saved me the trouble of posting it.
should I already rebut it?
Knock yourself out.
You think that since their software cannot be included in a 'your definition free' distribution that it matters? Why?
Because it does.
We all have definitions of free.
Yes, and there's two of them, in the English language. Much of the confusion stems from merging the synonyms for "liberty", and "without cost", into a single word. This unfortunate historical accident must be blamed for causing constant confusion, on the part of simple-minded folks, ever since. But, other languages managed to evolve past that point; hopefully, some day, the King's English will do as well.
RedHat linux ... is that free?
Yup.
No - you must pay for it and they claim copyright over it and also consider it a violation of their agreement to have their distribution without paying money for it.
You don't know what you're talking about. Look up. See there? High up in the sky? Way above your head? It's a big, honking clue, and it's called "CentOS".
That's not free either in the 'money' definition of the word.
That's more free than Nvidia's definition of free.
- better than many companies ...
I wouldn't say that.
Why?
Because.
There are many companies who do not ever offer linux drivers, nor support developers to produce them.
They don't need to offer a Linux driver for their USB mouse.
Just to join _that_ thread into this one, for efficiency's sake.
Do you provide the linux community with something as good as they do that is used by so many people for free? ...
I would give a ballpark estimate of around million people worldwide who are using my free software. I don't know how that stacks up to the Nvidia's fan club.
You think courier mail is that popular? I have no idea :P
Well, you can begin with imap.spamcop.net, as a starting point, and go from there.
Reading your comment seems to be very critical of nVidia. Though, of course, I could have read your comment wrong ...
Nope, you've got it pretty much nailed.
Meh - feel free to reply once more - but I shall not continue this since it has been debated before.
Come 'ere, and I'll bite ya kneecaps off!
On Sun, 2007-04-29 at 20:23 +0930, Tim wrote:
And when it doesn't work, your only recourse is to buy another card. Are you going to risk buying another one from them that mightn't work, or go for something from somewhere else.
I'm in that boat right now. The nvidia 3D chipset in my Dell Latitude D800 doesn't work with compiz. It should, and is listed as being supported, but it doesn't - all I get is a massively slowed down desktop as soon as compiz is enabled.
A nvidia tech guy actually asked for info and I gave him everything he asked for, and then he stopped responding. I guess that means "screw you".
What sucks more is that the D800 is basically busted, while an even older Toshiba Satellite (P3 800), with a GeForce2 Go, works beautifully with compiz. Go figure.
Regards,
Ranbir
On 5/1/07, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu m3freak@thesandhufamily.ca wrote:
On Sun, 2007-04-29 at 20:23 +0930, Tim wrote:
And when it doesn't work, your only recourse is to buy another card. Are you going to risk buying another one from them that mightn't work, or go for something from somewhere else.
I'm in that boat right now. The nvidia 3D chipset in my Dell Latitude D800 doesn't work with compiz. It should, and is listed as being supported, but it doesn't - all I get is a massively slowed down desktop as soon as compiz is enabled.
A nvidia tech guy actually asked for info and I gave him everything he asked for, and then he stopped responding. I guess that means "screw you".
Where & when did you contact NVIDIA?
On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 08:36 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
Where & when did you contact NVIDIA?
Late last year, I believe. I just sent an email to their support, and it went from there.
The conversation kept up for a while, so I was starting to think they would actually fix the problem, but I was wrong. :(
Regards,
Ranbir
On 5/1/07, Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu m3freak@thesandhufamily.ca wrote:
On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 08:36 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
Where & when did you contact NVIDIA?
Late last year, I believe. I just sent an email to their support, and it went from there.
The conversation kept up for a while, so I was starting to think they would actually fix the problem, but I was wrong. :(
That person was most likely me, however I don't have emails going back as far as last year to see where the communication dropped off. If I had to guess, the reason why it couldn't be fixed was because I could not reproduce the problem. Unless you were provided with a bug number, or a clear statement that it was a known issue which would be fixed in a future driver, then you should not have assumed that the issue would be explicitly investigated further or resolved. If you still have a copy of the email thread, I'd be curious to see what was said. We should probably take this off list, as I doubt anyone else wants to see this dicussion.
On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 08:52 -0700, Lonni J Friedman wrote:
That person was most likely me, however I don't have emails going back as far as last year to see where the communication dropped off.
Oh yeah, it was you! I didn't recognize the name.
If I had to guess, the reason why it couldn't be fixed was because I could not reproduce the problem. Unless you were provided with a bug number, or a clear statement that it was a known issue which would be fixed in a future driver, then you should not have assumed that the issue would be explicitly investigated further or resolved.
Ummm, okay.
If you still have a copy of the email thread, I'd be curious to see what was said. We should probably take this off list, as I doubt anyone else wants to see this dicussion.
Unfortunately, I don't, and I've given up on it anyway. I'm not going to bother since I'll be getting a new laptop in a year or so. I can live without the 3D desktop effects.
Thanks for replying...
Regards,
Ranbir
Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu writes:
Unfortunately, I don't, and I've given up on it anyway. I'm not going to bother since I'll be getting a new laptop in a year or so. I can live without the 3D desktop effects.
This is your golden opportunity to get rid of this headache, once and for all. Be sure to buy a laptop with an Intel or ATI chipset that's supported by Mesa, and have everything working out of the box. I don't see why anyone who'se in the market for a laptop with Linux would want to put up with this annoyance, in this day and age.
Sam Varshavchik wrote:
Kanwar Ranbir Sandhu writes:
Unfortunately, I don't, and I've given up on it anyway. I'm not going to bother since I'll be getting a new laptop in a year or so. I can live without the 3D desktop effects.
This is your golden opportunity to get rid of this headache, once and for all. Be sure to buy a laptop with an Intel or ATI chipset that's supported by Mesa, and have everything working out of the box. I don't see why anyone who'se in the market for a laptop with Linux would want to put up with this annoyance, in this day and age.
Careful there. All the new ATI models are unsupported. None of the X1NNN series are supported by the radeon or ati driver. The commercial fglrx driver does not support AIGLX and will only work with the XGL server, which is a pain.
Almost all of the new ATI based laptops are shipping with X1400, X1300, and other X1NNN series GPUs.
I just rebuilt my X1400 based laptop with 17" WUXGA (1920x1200) display with F7. The very best I can get is 1600x1200 with the vesa driver, and of course, no 3D support. The commercial fglrx driver has an issue with F7 right now.
So saying that anyone should buy ATI GPUs in laptops is asking for trouble as well.
The video card vendors are trying to maintain lock in, and that means that both ATI and Nvidia refuse to divulge enough details about the hardware interface to make an equivalent device driver.
Currently, only intel has enough of the notebook GPU market to make a reasonable recommendation to Linux consumers. And only intel is actively working with open source developers. And to make matters worse, the intel GPUs are generally inferior (3D OpenGL performance wise) to the others.
Performance wise, only the nvidia driver is on par with its Windows counterpart.
So what to do? What to buy?
Same old answer: Do what's best for you.
If OpenGL performance is paramount, then there is no option but Nvidia.
If seamless integration is important, the the only major laptop GPU to buy is intel.
If your company buys what is on sale and gives it to you to work with (raises hand) then you will probably get stuck with an ATI X1NN series GPU.
Good Luck!
Phil Meyer writes:
So saying that anyone should buy ATI GPUs in laptops is asking for trouble as well.
Looks like Lenovo is still selling the T43 Thinkpad. I've got an old T43 Thinkpad with an ATI chipset that works perfectly. I'm too lazy too boot it now, to get the exact model number, but it is Mesa-supported.
Unless Lenovo swapped their hardware, under the coverts (entirely possible), there are still ATI chipsets being sold that have native Mesa support.
On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 16:42 -0600, Phil Meyer wrote:
The video card vendors are trying to maintain lock in, and that means that both ATI and Nvidia refuse to divulge enough details about the hardware interface to make an equivalent device driver.
Kinda begs the question as to whether anybody has ripped apart the proprietary NVideo Linux drivers, yet, to make something better.
On 5/1/07, Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au wrote:
On Tue, 2007-05-01 at 16:42 -0600, Phil Meyer wrote:
The video card vendors are trying to maintain lock in, and that means that both ATI and Nvidia refuse to divulge enough details about the hardware interface to make an equivalent device driver.
Kinda begs the question as to whether anybody has ripped apart the proprietary NVideo Linux drivers, yet, to make something better.
It is being worked on: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
Jonathan
Meh - I sorted this out a few weeks back. Here's the results for anyone who likes to use nVidia drivers
It's a dual display: a) LCD, b) TV as separate displays I do this so I can play movies on the TV fullscreen using mplayers -fs option (and setting the display to :0.1) (and still use the LCD) The 1680x1050 LCD may have had problems before 2.6.20-1.2948.fc6 (well - it did but I'm not sure what changes I made to solve them)
Also note, ScreenX and VideocardY are not the same - I just didn't swap the names around :P
Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 Screen 1 "Screen1" 1680 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" EndSection
Section "Files" RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb" FontPath "unix/:7100" EndSection
Section "Module" Load "dbe" Load "extmod" Load "type1" Load "freetype" Load "glx" EndSection
Section "ServerFlags" Option "Xinerama" "0" EndSection
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" Option "XkbLayout" "us" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" EndSection
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor1" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "TV-0" HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0 VertRefresh 60.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "CRT-0" HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0 VertRefresh 60.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce 6600 GT" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 0 Option "TVStandard" "PAL-B" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard1" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce 6600 GT" BusID "PCI:1:0:0" Screen 1 EndSection
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen1" Device "Videocard0" Monitor "Monitor1" DefaultDepth 24 Option "metamodes" "TV: 800x600 +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Videocard1" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Option "metamodes" "CRT: 1680x1050 +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" EndSubSection EndSection
P.S. careful - nVidia 'take' your money, you don't choose to give it to them - you might want to stay away from nVidia :D :D
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Andrew -
Jonathan Berry -
Lonni J Friedman -
Lonni J Friedman -
Phil Meyer -
Ranbir -
Sam Varshavchik -
Tim