Chicken and Egg

[Gregory Storer]

On Sat, 2007-12-29 at 13:24 +1100, Sridhar Dhanapalan wrote:
> On Sat, 29 Dec 2007, Gregory Storer <gps at storer.com.au> wrote:
> > I still use the XP machine for watching movies, haven't yet found a way
> > to successfully watch then with Ubuntu - and have had trouble with the
> > video card trying to get it to play nicely with the TV.  
> 
> What's your video chipset? Maybe we can help you with that :)

Thanks.  Its an nvidia GEForce FX5500.  I have download and run the
NVIDIA Xserver settings program, and also tried this fix:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NvidiaTVOut
without much success.  The TV screen always reverts to "disabled" in the
NVIDA program, no matter which settings I choose.  Clearly I've got the
wrong settings in my Xorg.conf file - which I've pasted at the bottom of
this message.


> > Overall, I want to throw Windows out the window.  My kids still use XP,
> > some of the online games, especially those with shockwave, won't work on
> > a linux machine.
> 
> Shockwave works through WINE. Flash already works well natively. From my 
> experience, Linux is an excellent choice for children. The breadth and 
> quality of FOSS software for children and education is phenomenal.


I hadn't tried WINE, as I assumed it require a good deal of knowledge to
get it up and running.  What a surprise that was, so simple and straight
forward!

Greg.



# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 1.0  (buildmeister at builder3)  Thu Nov  9
17:56:12 PST 2006

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    RgbPath         "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: xconfig, VertRefresh source: xconfig
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "CRT-0"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 64.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 60.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce FX 5500"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT: 1280x1024 +0+0; CRT: 1024x768 +0+0;
CRT: 800x600 +0+0; CRT: 640x480 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600"
"640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection