[H-GEN] flat panel monitors with Linux?

[David Seikel]

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 --- David <davido at bigpond.net.au> wrote: 
> Does anyone have any horror or joy stories that they'd like to share, or 
> thoughts in general? 

<snip>

> I'm using Mandrake 9.0 (probably go 9.1 soon), hardware is amd athlon xp 
> 2200 and a chaintek 128M TI4200 video card. Being able to run dual 
> monitors at some point in the future is also a consideration.

I have recently purchased a Matrox G550 dual head video card, and a Samsung
SyncMaster 152t LCD monitor.  I use SuSE 8.2 on an AMD duron 900 (soon to
be an Athlon XP 3000).  Everything works great, with one minor quibble that
sounds worse than it is simply because it takes a lot to describe it B-).

The LCD monitor has both VGA and DVI inputs, while the card has both types
of output.  I use them in two configurations.  At home I plug in my old CRT
as well and go dual head.  At HUMBUG meetings, I carry my computer in my
backpack, and the LCD monitor clipped to the front in the day pack, so I
run it in single head mode when I get there.

At HUMBUG meetings, I plug the DVI output into the DVI input, and
everything works fine.  At home, I have to plug the LCD into the VGA
output, and the CRT via an adapter into the DVI output!  The Matrox card
needs to be told to put the DVI output into DVI mode when running dual
head, even though it works fine in single head mode, otherwise it defaults
to VGA mode.  The drivers supplied with the Matrox card can do that, but
they are not compiled for XFree86 4.3.0, the version that comes with SuSE
8.2.  The drivers are compiled for earlier versions of XFree86.

When I get around to it, I will compile the driver for XFree86 4.3.0
(source code is supplied), it should work fine.  In the mean time, the
quality of the VGA input to the LCD monitor is of almost the same quality
as the DVI, so I live with it.  Matrox themselves will eventually get
around to modifying their drivers for 4.3.0.

The Samsung monitor folds up nice and flat for easy transport in my day
pack, one of my top selection criteria, and other HUMBUG members have
commented on the excellent quality and viewing angle.

Is it my imagination, or do monitors take longer to switch between video
modes the newer they are?  Sounds pathetically ridiculous to me, but that
seems to be the way they are.

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