Troubleshooting & How-Tos šŸ“” šŸ” Linux

NVIDIA/Nouveau picture extending beyond screen (Solved)

I upgraded my desktop Linux system to Fedora 21 recently, and decided instead of trying to get the proprietary NVIDIA driver working, Iā€™d just switch back to the open-source Nouveau driver. I uninstalled every RPM that had ā€œnvidiaā€ in the name (I use rpmfusion to keep the installation clean), restarted, and was dismayed to see that the system decided I could only run at 800x600. I didnā€™t have time to fix it immediately, so I shut down and went on with my day. That evening, I started it up again ready to fix itā€¦and was surprised to see that the resolution had been detected correctly this time.

Almost.

It wasnā€™t obvious at the login screen, but the picture extended just a little past the edge of the monitor. I could tell because the mouse cursor would actually move off the screen in all directions. Once I logged in, and I could look at things near the edge, it was more obvious. And if I looked closely, I could tell that a lot of things that should have been sharp pixel lines were actually antialiased.

TL;DR: It was actually a monitor setting, and apparently the proprietary driver had been overriding it.

Back in the day, on a CRT, Iā€™d have just adjusted the monitor. But with an LCD, that shouldnā€™t even be an issue. (Shouldnā€™t.) If youā€™re running at native resolution, youā€™re running at native resolution. I checked the monitor anyway (a Hannspree), and of course there were no height/width settings anywhere, though I did see some position settings that were disabled.

I couldnā€™t find any discussions, howtos, or reports of other people dealing with the same issue. The closest I found was someone who was displaying their desktop on a TV, and the picture extended beyond the screen boundary. In retrospect, that should have been a clue.

So I decided to experiment with the monitor settings just to see what I could find. There was one called HDMI Mode, which was set to Video Mode. I changed it, figuring maybe it would enable those height/width settings. The other option was PC Modeā€¦and the picture instantly snapped to the right size. I assume ā€œvideo modeā€ was intended for TV input, to prevent any black bars from appearing around the edge. But it never made a difference when I was using NVIDIAā€™s drivers, so I assume they were overriding the setting.