[H-GEN] Virtual screen sizes in XFree86

Stephen Thorne sjthorne at ozemail.com.au
Tue Sep 5 22:52:49 EDT 2000


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On Wed, Sep 06, 2000 at 10:23:49AM +1000, Paul Gearon wrote:
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm trying to configure an XFree86 server such that it can do both 800x600
> and 1024x768.  Putting 2 entries in the mode line for the screen does this
> easily (via Ctrl-Alt-num+, Ctrl-Alt-num-).  So far so good.
> 
> Unfortunately the 800x600 mode has a virtual screen size of 1024x768.  
> This is not what I want.  I was thinking that maybe I could use the
> "Virtual" subsection in XF86Config, but that only provides for a single
> virtual screen size.
> 
> Looking at the "Virtual" subsection in the man page for XF86Config, it
> says:
>   If this entry is not  present,  the
>   virtual  screen  resolution  will  be  set  to
>   accommodate all the valid video modes given in
>   the  Modes  entry.
> 
> This seems to either imply that you get a different virtual screen size
> for each resolution (which isn't what happens) or that it picks a single
> screen size which can accomodate all the resolutions (ie. the largest,
> which is what I get).  I want the former, and not the later, but I don't
> know how to get it.
> 
> Surely this is possible?  Can someone help?
> 
> (The reason I need it is for someone who has recently installed Linux to
> try it out.  He can do this in Windows, so he wants to do it in Linux.  
> This is to accomodate the 2 people who use the box and who want different
> resolutions)
> 

There are two solutions that are done... reletively easily and with
approximately the same cludge factor that I'm aware of.

Use 2 XF86Config files, and invoke a different one for each user.

Have 2 colour depths, one with 1024, one with 768. i.e. 16/24/32 bit.

I use the latter to run starcraft under wine to get the correct res
(convient side effect is that it runs 5x faster in 8 bit colour)

Steve.

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