[gentoo-user] Re: (II) NV(0): Setting screen physical size to 508 x 317

[walt]

On 07/15/2010 11:03 PM, Erik wrote:
> 2010-07-16 01:51, walt skrev:
>> On 07/15/2010 02:15 AM, Erik wrote:
>>
>>> ...This is the
>>> new Dell vostro|1720 from November, that replaced the old INSPIRON|8600
>>> aquired 5 years earlier...
>>
>> I feel as if I'm reading a post that I selected at random from the
>> middle of a long thread with lots of previous questions and answers
>> that I can't see.
>>
>> I've never heard of either of those products.  Maybe someone else
>> knows what they are?


> Do not worry about not knowing about the products that I mentioned in
> the parenthesis in the last paragraph (they are just some laptops with
> differend graphic cards built in).

Ah, I understand now.  I was expecting the information to be relevant.

> You may know enough to help if you
> are familiar with Xorg, in particular the driver called NV (as the first
> 2 lines of my post shows)...

I know a little about it.  It is no longer maintained by xorg or nvidia, so
that may be part of the problem if you are using recent nvidia hardware.

A commonly asked question is "does it work as expected with the vesa driver?"
(Vesa does not include 2D/3D acceleration, obviously, but it should at least
give you correct results for an ordinary console.)

The open-source 'nv' driver has been replaced by the open-source 'nouveau'
driver, which is still very much a work in progress.  I'm using it just to
experiment -- I don't need 2D/3D acceleration, but maybe you do.  If so, you
need to use nvidia's proprietary 'nvidia' driver because it's the only choice
you have at present.

All of the drivers I mentioned are in gentoo portage in the xf86-video-* series.

"nouveau" suppport in the kernel needs a bit of annoying fiddling with the
kernel config file to get it right.  I can help with that if you want to try
it.