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Get Basic 2D NVIDIA Working on Debian Linux for Optiquest Q22wb Monitor 0 0

I have an Optiquest Q22wb monitor, a wide screen monitor with a 1680x1050 resolution. I installed Debian 4.0 (Etch) on my system, and the installation kept going to a 1600x1200 resolution. Entering 1680x1050 into my xorg.conf file made no difference.

After some research, I realized that the problem was that I was using the VESA driver as my "Generic Video Card" in xorg.conf. I had looked into installing the full nvidia driver that seemed to match my video card, but that was complicated, so I reverted to the VESA driver.

Finally, I found the NvidiaGraphicsDrivers page on the Debian Wiki: http://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers. Here I found that Debian comes with a basic, free 2D Nvidia driver named "nv".

I replaced the "vesa" setting in xorg.conf with "nv", logged out and re-logged in, and my screen went immediately to the 1680x1050 resolution I had specified as my default in xorg.conf!

There was still one problem: when the monitor autoadjusted, it put the top menu bar out of sight. If I manually adjust the vertical size, I can bring the menu tabs into view.

My temporary solution is to move the menu bar to the right side of my screen. This is easy to do if you're using the XFCE window manager (which I just switched to).

So, using the "nv" driver instead of "vesa" has given me my 1680x1050 resolution. Images now look normal instead of being horizontally stretched. Now, if only I could get the letters in applications to look clear!

Keywords: debian,nvidia

Fix Debian Etch Flash Problem by Deleting swf-player 0 0

A very strange solution to a problem that has been ongoing on my new Debian Etch installation: I was not able to view any Flash content in my web browsers. I followed the instructions that came up in my browser about installing the necessary plugin. After I did that, Flash content still didn't work. Instead, every Flash area on a browser page showed this message:

"This SWF file is known to trigger bugs in the swfdec decoder. Playback is cancelled."

A search for this issue returns many pages, such as Debian bug report #415236. It looks like the problem is resolved in later versions of swfdec, but these later versions are not part of the standard Etch package list.

Among all the pages I browsed, one person talked about seeing the Flash problem go away after he removed some swf-related Debian packages. So, I decided to experiment along these lines. Though it seemed unlikely that this would help, I removed the swf-player package:

quadcore:/home/kevin# apt-get remove swf-player
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  swf-player
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 5 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives.
After unpacking 184kB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
(Reading database ... 77731 files and directories currently installed.)
Removing swf-player ...

Then, I closed and relaunched Firefox, went to a web page that includes Flash, and to my utter surprise: it worked! I went to another site that uses Flash, and that worked too!

The problem seems solved, as a result of removing the sfw-player package.

Keywords: debian,flash