Arch Linux

khouli

Member

Registered: 2014-12-14

Posts: 70

Why do video card drivers affect console resolution?

When I switched from the video card drivers that come with arch to the drivers in the nvidia package, resolution decreased outside of the X Window System (what is the term for this?). (Or at least the size of the text increased.) I asked about how to fix this in Newbie Corner.

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=192068

I was surprised that this is video card driver related. Why would video card drivers affect resolution of the console vs in the X Window System? Instead, I would have expected that a particular video card and driver have resolutions that they are capable of and this is independent of the application that is running.

What's going on behind the scenes?

nstgc

Member

Registered: 2014-03-17

Posts: 393

Re: Why do video card drivers affect console resolution?

I'm not sure why, but I have the proprietary nVidia drivers and my TTY resolution is native 1920X1200. Don't know why, but it is. I didn't do anything special. Just followed the Beginner's Guide on the Wiki.

Also, don't make more than one thread for the same problem. If it is a different, related problem, that probably will fly, but this seems to be the exact same issue.

khouli

Member

Registered: 2014-12-14

Posts: 70

Re: Why do video card drivers affect console resolution?

Well, this is "how is xyz possible? is there something to understand here?" and that's more "how do I make xyz just go away?".

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Why do video card drivers affect console resolution?

It's not about X video drivers but about KMS and framebuffer drivers.

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,607

Re: Why do video card drivers affect console resolution?

The console and X are simply two completely different subsystems. The console runs in either text mode or in framebuffer mode (fbdev). Nvidia doesn't provide a fbdev interface, that's why you can't have a high-resolution console with it, there's just text mode. The reason for that is very simple - the Nvidia driver is primarily a workstation driver and none of Nvidia's workstation customers care about the console, so there's no incentive for Nvidia to provide a fbdev interface.