Work is getting a new person starting Wednesday so I have been moved else where. It is actually nicer where I am now since no one is around most the time. I also ended up getting to go pick out a new desk and chair. Needless to say setting everything up and moving all my stuff has ate up the morning pretty good.
The camera on the phone seems to think there is a green tint to the room..
There have been few game series this far in my life that have made me break down and get the newer system just to play the game. The first one I can remember is California games for the Atari 2600. After that it was Zelda A Link to the Past for the Super Nintendo. This was only after I became hooked on Zelda for the Nintendo. Playstation came home with me when I played Tony Hawk Pro Skater at a friends house. Playstation II was to get Grand Theft Auto III. The PSP was a combo of Socom and Grand Theft Auto.
With all this in mind there is only one console that I have never bought just because of the maker. That would be the Microsoft Xbox and now its younger brother. It has never been an issue for me because any of the games I really liked where on other consoles. Halo was less than exciting for me, and reminded me of UT on the Dreamcast. Don’t get me wrong its a good game but was neat but not great enough to get a console for.
The only reason I was thinking this over is because of any article on wired about Microsoft paying $50 mil (I hope this is a joke) for the exclusive rights to downloadable content in Grand Theft Auto IV. Right now it is only confirmed to include extra missions. It really made me think about “what if they had gotten the whole game?”.
My plans this far are still to stay clear of the Microsoft consoles, but if I ever do break down it will be used. If I get it used it counts for one less new sale for them right? :)
I have been trying to switch over to just using my laptop for all my computer usage, but don’t want to throw down the money for a dock station unless I am sure. The biggest issue I have been having is setting up the vga out on the laptop to clone the current desktop that is running at 1024×768 to the 1440×900 wide screen lcd. To sum that up I want to clone the desktop not only to a larger resolution, but also change the aspect.
Here are the random snippets of interest that I added to my xorg.conf. This is not the full xorg.conf and only shows the sections related to video and display setup.
Section "Device"
Identifier "card2"
# Driver "ati"
Driver "radeon"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
#Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
Option "Clone" "true"
#Option "CloneMode" "1440x900"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "card1"
Driver "radeon"
# Driver "ati"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
#Option "MonitorLayout" "CRT,LFP"
Option "Clone" "true"
#Option "CloneMode" "1440x900"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor 2"
HorizSync 30-82
VertRefresh 56-76
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen 2"
Device "card2"
# Device "card1"
DefaultDepth 24
Monitor "Generic Monitor 2"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "card1"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
Screen "Default Screen 2" #LeftOf "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
Option "Xinerama" "on"
# Option "Clone" "1"
EndSection
After some playing around in the xorg.conf file I was able to get something close to what I wanted, but it is a little buggy as you will see below.
I normally don’t have the bottom panel there so for the most part it works (Putting the bottom panel in lets you see what is going on better). As you can see from the image gnome is thinking that it is still running in 1024×768. Both Gnome and xfce do the same placement of the panels. Cloning is working but a little buggy. :)
This image shows that the applications will actually function in the space between the panels.
Maximize actually will only fit the window between the two panels in the 1024×768 area. If the window is outside the 1024×768 area it will maximize to the full screen of 1440×900.
This is the part of the post where it starts to get interesting. If we actually remove the bottom panel (how I normally have my desktop setup) and use the maximize, the window will actually goto the full screen and you can also see that even with both panels the whole area of the 1440×900 area is usable. Maximize when both panels are on will also go full if the window is larger than the 1024×768 area. With removing the bottom panel the desktop starts to seem more usable.
Actually looking at the laptop screen while using the other monitor you can see that stuff is just going off the display area of the smaller display but can be seen on the larger widescreen lcd. For some reason it looks like xorg understands that the extra area is on the other monitor and is using all the space. Gnome, xfce, and gdm don’t seem to understand what is going on and stay true to the laptops lcd’s .
One of the more confusing things for me is that the background manager (gnome) will actually scale the background image to the correct size on both lcds. I don’t know enough about how gnome is placing the panels or figuring out the size of windows, but maybe it needs to be thinking of it as percents so that it can change dynamically with the screen size?
