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Saturday, June 7. 2008Dual Monitor setup in Linux - or How To convince the nVidia drivers to display 1680x1050 in X with an FX5200
I've finally gotten back around to a dual monitor setup. The last time I used dual monitors (besides having multiple machines each with their own monitor sitting in front of me) was years ago when I did CAD work all the time. It was great having one screen with an overview of the drawing and using the big screen for the detail work; or in another case, having the command line on a small monochrome monitor and using the good monitor for the graphics. The former was using Microstation, one of the only programs that supported such a configuration at the time, and the latter was with AutoCad (circa v10-11), which IIRC would only support the command portion running on a separate monitor, not graphics (though maybe there was an upgrade for that, but my access to budget for upgrades was pretty limited.)
Over the past year or so I've been doing more programming work and have on more than a few occassions wished I had more screen real estate available. I regularly have several programs open just in general, multiple tabs in my browser, my shell windows, and usually in whatever IDE (recently I've been trying out Eclipse) or text editor (Vim for anything serious) I'm using will have several files open at once. I use Opera and Firefox, but tend to use Opera more which I currently have about 50 tabs open in. This is about average and Opera will restore them whenever I close the program and restart it for whatever reason. I'm pretty sure Firefox can do this as well, just like it could also be set to use a shortcut in the URL input (address bar) for searching. So I frequently have dozens of things that focus needs to be switched to and from. Putting certain things on different desktops in KDE helps with organizing a little and also makes time tracking using KArm (KTimeTracker in KDE4) a little easier for me, but switching desktops can consume a significant amount of time itself when I'm doing something that requires frequently doing so. Then there are the times when looking at two different sections of code (or some similar case) is just painful when it requires resizing windows in such a way that the relevant portions can be viewed simultaneously or particularly if there just isn't enough room on the screen to do it. I've run into enough of these situations that I had considered throwing a PCI graphics card into my machine and adding another CRT. However, CRT's in 17-19" range are rather bulky, not to mention quite heavy to be putting several of them on a desk which is only 5/8" laminated particle board. Since I acquired an Nvidia FX5200 card several months ago which has VGA, DVI, and S-Video output I figured I would hold off and just add an LCD when I could fit one into the budget. Yes, I've finally upgraded to a video card that came out over five years ago, but most of the hardware in my AthlonXP 2000 system is also over five years old (hard drives are another story). I had used a GeForce3 I think it was until I replaced my motherboard with an Asus A7N8X (still the same one in my primary machine although I finally replaced the bad capacitors last year when they got so bad that it affected stability). Unfortunately, the A7N8X was not compatible with my GeForce. So rather than get a new card I used whatever 8x AGP card I had sitting around, which I believe was a basic SIS card which had very limited 3d capability. It was acceptable for older Windows FPS games and other LAN games I played at the time, but in Linux I was stuck with software rendering. I've since removed the Windows dual boot capability as I have no need for it (my laptop has an XP partition that I left on there for those times that I really need to use Windows). So I've been watching prices on LCD monitors for a while and figured I should be able to get a decent monitor for less than $300. While it would be nice and probably ideal to have something like this, I'm not watching stock feeds all day, nor do I currently do the sort of work to justify something like this. Besides, I don't have thousands available to spend on monitors, on top of the thousands I would have to spend to create room for them, not to mention the thousands I would have spend on additional bedrooms, bathroom, etc. before my wife would even consider allowing thousands to be spent on monitors.  I ended up ordering a KDS K-2237MDWB 22" widescreen flat panel from newegg. It seems that the widescreens are more popular, more available and apparently are cheaper to produce, thus a better profit margin for the manufacturers and ultimately a lower price in general to the consumer compared to the standard square monitors. I payed less than $250 including shipping for the KDS which is close to what many 19" panels are selling for. The monitor only came with a VGA cable, no DVI, so for a week or so I ran it instead of the CRT until I got a DVI cable ordered from Radio Shack. It seems that straight DVI cables aren't stocked by anyone anymore as everywhere I checked only had DVI - HDMI cables. I got around to connecting the flat panel via DVI to free up the VGA for the CRT and here's where I ran into a snag. I first tried using Twinview and wasn't thrilled with the result from that. It might be OK for use with identical or similar monitors where the resolutions can match, but I couldn't get an acceptable configuration in it with my setup. I'm not so sure that the benefit of being able to move windows between screens would be useful to me anyway. So I went with configuring separate x screens for each monitor. The clipboard for copy/paste works across the screens and it's not too big of a deal to open up a copy of anything on the second screen that needs to be viewed at the same time. The problem I had was that the driver would only allow a resolution of 1440x900 on the DFP after I had connected it via DVI. After some googling, troubleshooting, updating to the latest nvidia drivers, further fiddling and more googling I found out that the FX5200 (at least the one I have) could only support a Maximum 135Mhz pixel clock. However, I came across a post on the nVidia forums that indicated a workaround which has allowed me to have a 1680x1050 display on the KDS with my FX5200. Use the following Modeline in the Monitor section of the xorg.conf # cvt -r -v 1680 1050 60 And the following Option in the Device section. Option "ExactModeTimingsDVI" The next thing was to set the flat panel to be the primary screen, which I did by simply swapping the relevant numbers in the conf file. So here's my current xorg.conf file for this: Section "ServerLayout" I've only restarted X once since this config, but I had to change the resolution in nvidia-settings to 1680x1050 - it came up at 1440x900. Probably the autoselect, though there should be some option to force it, but I haven't bothered to figure it out yet. The only other thing I may look into changing so far would be making the console default to the LCD. Eventually, I may get around to taking some pics of my setup including the $600+ Ergohuman chair that I got for just over $200 (floor display on clearance). I just happened to come across this while shopping around for a real chair to replace my elcheapo task chair which the back broke on quite a while ago. Sunday, December 23. 2007Maryland sales tax to apply to Computer Services
As part of the special "tax-grab" session of the Maryland Legislature, rather than doing something sensible like eliminating any unecessary spending or otherwise reducing expenditures to address an alleged budget problem, they ultimately went with just trying to increase tax revenue.
One of the things that was opposed by many constituents and companies was the inclusion of "computer services" into the sales tax increase bill. An amendment was proposed to remove the computer services portion, but that amendment was voted down. So as it stands, computer services will be subject to sales tax. Huh? :confused: More details can be found at the MD Chamber of Commerce blog which has links to the bill text at MLIS. The language of the bill that was accepted is as follows: Article – Tax – General It seems quite ambiguous with regards to the list of "does not include". Does it mean that an outside vendor working on a problem with the accounting software or any hardware involved in the accounting dept. is not subject to sales tax? Is outside vendor work on a companies' web or email server taxable because it's not related to business management? Is all in-house tech support excluded? One would think so. Is network security analysis or protection measures considered 'services'? Is any work done on a network or computer used for professional services, banking, or in business management excluded? Apparently, web design is included. I still have several questions myself on exactly what this law is supposed to apply to, besides the obvious why or how can a sales tax legally be applied to services. I think it is ridiculous and bizarre to say the least. The fact that such legislation even passed just goes to show how out of touch with reality, and their constituents, the MD legislature is. My biggest question is, as a DE company, do I need to collect sales tax for work done for MD clients? If this is so, I will very likely be refusing any such work once this goes into effect.  |
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