[gentoo-amd64] Re: Multilib or not?

[Duncan]

Tonko Mulder <tonko.mulder@×××××.com> posted
1227375494.15158.1.camel@Gaius, excerpted below, on  Sat, 22 Nov 2008
18:38:09 +0100:

>> use one randr setting pannel. the krandr for kde does this and i'm sure
>> there's a randr control panel also for gnome.
>>
> Yes there is, grandr but I tried that and it didn't work that well. I
> could try it some in the future, but atm I use xrandr but maybe I need
> to check on the man-page in order to get it working.

FWIW, I tried the kde3 krandr-tray applet and it appears to be outdated, 
only handling randr-1.0 commands.  I suppose kde4 has an updated version 
with the 1.1 and 1.2 commands.  I do have kde4 merged now, but it's still 
broken in enough ways I don't use it for everyday yet.

Meanwhile, I'm using dual 1920x1200 LCD panels in stacked config using 
the xf86-video-ati radeon driver and its randr support.  This is with 
xorg-server-1.5.2 and xf86-video-ati-6.9.0, still running a Radeon 92xx 
series card.  When I upgraded from the older xf86-video-ati merged 
framebuffer support to the newer version with randr support instead, I 
did have to spend some time learning the new setup and changing my 
xorg.conf file, but after I did so, I get both panels running at native 
resolution, in my preferred stacked configuration, no problem.

That takes care of full/native resolution, but there are still issues 
with lower resolutions.  Back with merged framebuffer, I could use the 
alt-ctrl-numplus/numminus sequences to switch between configured 
resolutions.  That no longer works, and as I said, krandr-tray (at least 
the kde3 version) doesn't work right either, with multiple displays at 
least.

So I scripted up a solution using xrandr, put the entries in my kmenu, 
and can use them to switch resolutions.  But there's still a problem.  
The origin coordinates portion appears to be broken, so when I downgrade 
resolution, the viewport is always the upper left portion of the full 
size version.  There's no mouse panning with randr yet (that's supposed 
to be added for xorg-server 1.5.3 or possibly later if what I read is 
correct), and with origin coordinates broken at least on the radeon 
driver on my hardware, upper left (still stacked at least, but still just 
upper left) is all I get, and that's not very practical.

So I've been working around it using font size change when necessary for 
text, and image magnification for images.  That has worked for most 
things, and fortunately, the one other thing I used non-standard 
resolutions for, an old DOS based game I still play in DOSBOX (Master of 
Orion, original edition, the only non-freedomware I still run, yes, that 
does make its programmers my master), works just fine if I set the upper 
panel for full resolution and the lower one for 640x480, using kwin to 
force the dosbox window to exactly the right coordinates to put its 
display all the way to the left just under the upper panel, so the lower 
panel's 640x480 viewport just happens to be the exact same coordinates as 
the dosbox window. =:^)

The point being that yes, dual-panel works with the freedomware xf86 ati/
radeon driver, at least for my hardware, once it's configured to do so.  
However, there are some limitations.

We should probably start a new thread on that if people want to discuss 
the config and how I got it to work.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman