Zaf’s Blog

If you haven’t watch this, do yourself a favour…

I’ve been trying out Ubuntu Feisty Fawn (do they get 12 year old’s to pick the names? Its not that I don’t like the name, they are just… odd)… I have previously been a Debian zealot, but Ubuntu is so much fun, I’m dropping Debian (shock and horror).

When I first setup Ubuntu I was impressed that I could enable NVidia’s proprietary driver with a few clicks. I was disappointed that I pretty much had to, as with a dual screen setup, the right LCD was displaying blinking garbage the whole time with the free driver.

This brings me to my main point, after enabling the NVidia driver, and using their nvidia-settings program, I had it all looking exactly how I wanted. Unfortunately when launching any OpenGL program (such as OpenArena), the program would centre itself between the two monitors, leaving a less than desirable view.

After not finding any information on how to solve this on the Ubuntu Forums, I posted a help request. 10 minutes later I stumbled across a solution on the web. I updated my Ubuntu question with the solution. That was about 5 days ago.

Today I went back to the forum, and tried to find my question again. All I could find was more people asking the exact same question I had, with to replies, so I set about replying to their questions with a link to my answer.

I now reproduce that answer here, so that Google might find it and index it.

Solution

The problem is OpenGL needs a mode available where only one screen is active. The solution is to give it one.
Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf (Use your favourite method, I use sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf )

Find the “Screen” section
Change the metamodes option to add a new mode at your primary resolution, with only one screen with the mode, the other with NULL.

eg My new metamodes option looks like this:
Option “metamodes” “1280×1024,1280×1024; 1280×1024,NULL”
(The above should be all on one line obviously)
Restart the X server (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace), and it works.

Adding the 1280×1024,NULL mode seems to allow OpenGL apps to use just the left screen. (Obviously if you use this solution, change the resolutions to match your monitors).

One of the biggest problems with Open Source programs its difficult to find a single place to look for solutions, and when you do find that place, its difficult to find your problem described in the same way you describe it.

Open Arena brings back memories of Quake days. The Ubuntu version I installed only had 4 or 5 levels on it, which got boring after a few hours, but whilst the levels were new, the AI was a challenge.

Castle Combat has brought me to almost tears trying to get anywhere in it. Those damn tanks keep knocking down my walls!

So now I take tentative steps into the world of blogging.

The world now asks, is this another blog that begins and ends on the same day, or will this be a repository of wit, insightful comment and thought provoking commentary on the world?

Time will tell…