FC9 xorg.conf

[John M Cavallo]

On Monday 21 April 2008 11:13:28 am Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 10:54 -0400, Jim wrote:
> > Woiuld someone PLEASE!!  send me a copy of your FC9 xorg.conf, It didn't
> > setup my mouse in xorg.conf.
> > I prefer to have a xorg.conf that is on a LAPTOP.
> >
> > I ran a FC9-live and it does not produce a  /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
> >
> >
> > Thanks
> > Jim
>
> I'm curious as to why you need one?  We're working ever toward not
> needing xorg config files.

But you are going to need a configuration file to remember the preferred 
settings. It would be good to have a user preference and a global default, 
but it still needs to be accessable for editing. The problems that I have 
with the xorg configuration is that it is spread over too many files, 
documentation is hard to find (and not for a novice) and that the GUI's don't 
give enough control when they work.

This evaluation is the result of several weeks of trying to get my dual head 
system to work in F9, without complete success. I have a Dell XPS with an 
nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS. One monitor is a 22" wide screen DVI (1680x1050), 
the other is a 17" normal VGA (1280x1024). The 17" is connected to the second 
DVI port through an adapter. I had hopes that the nv driver would handle the 
8600, but I was disappointed. The nVidia driver available for F8 works (it 
took me a week to discover and configure it), but it is not available  X 
consistently fails to properly detect the monitors that are attached. Until 
this thread I couldn't find any way to have it not operate in mirror mode. 
Bringing up krandrtray in KDE would make the menu bar disappear. The Display 
GUI in Gnome doesn't work since it can't detect the monitors, can't be told 
to not mirror, and can't be told which driver. xrandr is opaque and I still 
haven't found the right place to put it to have it configure the login 
screen.

Last night I got the xorg.conf from the Xorg.0.log (thanks whoever it was who 
mentioned it in this list), which gave me a starting point. By editing it and 
using startx to test it, I was able to get both monitors to work at full 
resolution. Then I rebooted to run level 5, and the autodetection decided the 
17" screen should operate at 1152x864 with a black band on the left. It also 
decided to change the dpi set up so now I have large text. KDE still doesn't 
use the monitors properly. Since there is now good way to change the dpi 
setting, I again have to start editing Xsessions to try to get the resolution 
I prefer. Even then it doesn't seem to have a direct effect.

If you do away with xorg.conf you will need to put the configuration files 
(and there will have to be configuration files) in a single easily located 
place, and have an easily editable syntax. The documentation should also be 
easily accessable. You need to have GUI's that will allow the user to adjust 
everything and especially be able to override any of the auto-mis-detected 
settings. The GUI needs to list all the available options, and the effects 
should be seen immediately.

Sorry for the long rant, but it has been a long frustrating trip.

The almost operating xorg.conf. Anybody see how to get the 17" monitor to 
operate in a 1280x1024 mode? Anybody know why the KDE just ignores it?

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default nv Device 0"
        Driver  "nv"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default nv Screen 0"
        Device  "Builtin Default nv Device 0"
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Virtual   2960 1050
                Modes    "1680x1050"
        EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default fbdev Device 0"
        Driver  "fbdev"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"
        Device  "Builtin Default fbdev Device 0"
EndSection
Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default vesa Device 1"
#       Driver  "vesa"
        Driver  "nv"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default vesa Screen 1"
        Device  "Builtin Default vesa Device 1"
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
                Virtual   2960 1050
                Modes    "1280x1024"
        EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier      "Builtin Default Layout"
        Screen  "Builtin Default nv Screen 0"
        Screen  "Builtin Default fbdev Screen 0"
        Screen  "Builtin Default vesa Screen 1"
EndSection

I got the second monitor out of mirror mode by adding the Display subsections 
and changing the "vesa" screen and device identifiers to "1". Looking at it I 
wouldn't think that changing the identifier strings would have an effect, but 
xorg.conf is still black magic to me.