Rotating the Display

2 respostas [Última entrada]
mogyt
Desconectado
Joined: 10/27/2010

Hello,

I would like to rotate my displays 90 degrees (left or right) in order to use monitors in "portrait" position. Unfortunately, with Trisquel (4.0) on my old hardware, a rotated desktop is - in the best case - a lot slower than in the default (landscape) position. In most combinations though the system throws me out of the session after trying to rotate, or simply freezes. GNOME and KDE alike.

I tried with two graphic cards:
NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64 (32 MB),
ATI RV350 AQ (Radeon 9600) (128 MB)

and two monitors with
1280 x 1024 and
1680 x 1050 maximal resolution, both with VGA and DVI inputs.

In the default (landscape) mode all combinations work fine for me, also with multiple screens on the Radeon card. I use them mostly for text, web, gimp and rarely for videos (no games, no 3D effects).
I got only one combination though, that gave a usable rotated desktop:
the 1280 x 1024 monitor on the TNT2 card. But even this combination is much slower (e.g. when scrolling a web page or playing a movie) compared to the default (landscape) position, and is therefore not suited for serious work.

I am trying to migrate my work-flow to Trisquel since a while, and even tried to install the proprietary graphics drivers from the cards' respective manufacturers in the hope of making the system usable in my preferred way, but gave up after error messages implying that this free kernel is not supported by those drivers. The main version of the kernel of course, should be supported by both drivers. Also I have no experience in making changes to a kernel.

Using monitors/displays in portrait position is, in my opinion, definitely the more efficient way for most text or web oriented tasks, because you can, in general, fit more text/content on a rotated screen.

So I would like to ask if You now of any kind of a solution, e.g.
installing/removing some packages?
changing some configuration settings?
ask or encourage the right developers of some specific system component?

Thanks!
mogyt

SirGrant

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Desconectado
Joined: 07/27/2010

Have you tried doing it via System --> Preferences --> Monitors and then changing "Rotation" to "Right"? Was that the method you did when it says it slows down or freezes?

mogyt
Desconectado
Joined: 10/27/2010

Hello SirGrant,

My first try was of course in the default GNOME environment via
System / Preferences / "Display" (gnome-display-properties).

There are also 2 tools called "Monitor Settings":
- gddccontrol 0.4.2. - offers me only to set brightness and contrast of the monitor, and
- LXRandR 0.1.1 - offers only to set resolution and frequency of the monitor.

- In the above mentioned Display Preferences (gnome-display-properties) window there is an option to "Show displays in panel", which adds Indicator Applet 0.3.7 to the panel. This applet offers sometimes more rotation options than gnome-display-properties itself:
for my Radeon card I get at first only "Normal" or "Upside Down" with gnome-display-properties but the applet offers Right or Left too. Rotating the 1680 x 1050 Monitor with the applet results in a rotated desktop approximately 1050 x 1050, windows are resized, mouse works right, but the panel (at the bottom) is gone, and scrolling or changing to another window is slow.
From this rotation I can change back to Normal if I manage to open gnome-display-properties.

- "Multiple Screens" (grandr1.2) offers me left and right too, but returns the "User set screen size larger than max screen size" error message. "inverted" (upside down) works.

In KDE
- the display-randr applet (activated by KRandRTray ?) and the kcmdisplay dialogue window offer (as always in KDE) very sophisticated options, like mirroring, etc., but kick me out of the session right away when I try to apply a 90 degree rotation.

- XRandR ("Screen Layout Editor") offers rotation too, but kicks me out the same way.

- the Display Preferences (gnome-display-properties) started from resapplet offers rotation in KDE but shows no reaction when I try to apply.

The Radeon card with the 1280 x 1024 monitor gave no working combination neither.

As for the TNT2 (nvidia) card rotation works at least with the 1280 x 1024 monitor, but it freezes with the 1680 x 1050 monitor.

I added some of the above mentioned tools (like KDE itself) through the default software channel after the main system installation, so I might have missed some other critical components.
I tried to get the right names for the above mentioned tools but there may be mistakes because my local is set to German, and I did not follow the paths for the different launchers and programs.

Thanks again!
mogyt