Arch Linux

lordarthas

Member

From: Maniago, Friuli, Italy

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 5

Website

Gnome looks 4:3 on a my wide screen [SOLVED]

Hello!

I just installed Arch on my small Samsung Q45 notebook (with wide screen), and I'm having this curious problem with Gnome: even though X seems to stard at the correct resolution of 1280x800, Gnome panels do not fill up the full space.

An image is worth a thousand words so here we go:

http://www.italpro.net/images/gnome-strange.jpg

As you can see, the area at the right or at the bottom is perfectly usable, as I can move icons and windows there. However, the panels don't expand to fill it. This is probably due to a thing you can see in the screen resolution preferences dialog in the upper-right part of the screen: Gnome sees my screen as a 4:3 1024x768!!! Also it shows a weird refresh rate of 30hz.

Besides this problem, I can see everything perfectly well (readable chars, no flickers, perfect colours), so that must be a Gnome-related issue...?

Thanks,
Michele.

Last edited by lordarthas (2008-02-10 13:15:54)

uastasi

Member

From: Salento - Italy

Registered: 2007-11-27

Posts: 247

Re: Gnome looks 4:3 on a my wide screen [SOLVED]

Take a look to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf at Monitor Section and try editing your refresh rate. You can also switch to tty1 and see if it is an issue related to Gnome.
Anyway, check your graphic device main settings too.

Last edited by uastasi (2008-02-09 18:49:58)

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lordarthas

Member

From: Maniago, Friuli, Italy

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Gnome looks 4:3 on a my wide screen [SOLVED]

Hello!

Take a look to your /etc/X11/xorg.conf at Monitor Section and try editing your refresh rate.

VertRefresh is set to:

VertRefresh 50.0 - 75.0

which is a setting that doesn't even include the 30.0 that Gnome is showing me in the resolution preferences dialog. Moreover, I see things perfectly well, so I think X is correctly started at 1280x800@60Hz - it's just Gnome that seems to not be understanding that! Anyhow, I tried changing the above line to:

VertRefresh 60.0

but nothing really changes.

You can also switch to tty1 and see if it is an issue related to Gnome.

It is: on text terminals, and even with other X window managers, everything works. It's just Gnome (and it's related GDM) which size themselves wrongly.

Thanks,
Michele.

vogets

Member

Registered: 2006-11-25

Posts: 31

Re: Gnome looks 4:3 on a my wide screen [SOLVED]

Look at the output of xrandr ... I suspect that an additional output of your graphics card is enabled at 1024x768 ... usually the TV-Out.

If this is the case, add the following to your xorg.conf: (Probably you have to change the Identifier)

  Section "Monitor" 
       Identifier      "TV" 
       Option          "Ignore" "True" 
  EndSection

Reference: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2

lordarthas

Member

From: Maniago, Friuli, Italy

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 5

Website

Re: Gnome looks 4:3 on a my wide screen [SOLVED]

Hello vogets!

That was it: Gnome was using the settings of the TV-out. Now everything works perfectly.

Thank you also for the very interesting reference to this matter, I'll del.icio.us it right away!

Michele.