don fisher composed on 2016-03-04 12:54 (UTC-0700):
1. My graphics consists of a Nvidia GTX980M and and Intel HD Graphics 530. Two controllers I guess. The native screen resolution is 3840x2160. When I attempt to load the Leap DVD installation,
Your meaning here is ambiguous. Does this mean initiating a new Leap installation from DVD, or booting up an existing Leap installation originally made from DVD?
which I believe uses the Nouveau driver on the Nvidia hardware, the text is so small I can hardly read it. I do not understand how to control the mapping between the graphics controller and the screen. I was able to boot up one of my existing leap 4.1 distributions that resides on a USB drive. But again I could not read text on the screen due to the small size. I ran xrandr and it displayed various possible x/y resolution pairs. I executed one of the options, xrandr 1920x1440, and was able to get a magnified window of reduced size. Is there a way to tell X that I desire a zoom by at least a factor of two?
More than one way actually. Including a supported resolution on the kernel cmdline will cause the vttys to use the specified mode. So video=1920x1080[1] tacked onto the end of the kernel stanza, either on the fly at boot time or via bootloader configuration, would double the height and width of screen objects (e.g. text)(which is actually a quadrupling of physical size). If X is running on the Intel driver, X will inherit that same mode, with equivalent impact on screen object sizes. Resolution set on the vttys via kernel cmdline does impact X's otherwise automagic determination of resolution to use with the other FOSS drivers. Section "Monitor" Identifier "myHighDPIscreen" DisplaySize 369 208 # 132 DPI @ 1920x1080 EndSection The above included in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or in an otherwise valid /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-monitor.conf) on an installed system will cause Xorg itself to assume the attached display is in fact 369mm wide and 208mm tall. Used with a 28" 3840x2160 screen, which is 620mm wide by 349mm tail, height and width of screen text should be increased 76.5%. Any arbitrary values can be supplied to DisplaySize. In effect, DisplaySize can be used as a scaling factor much as you ask, just not as simple to implement as you might wish. By default, Plasma5, and possibly other environments, will ignore this global X configuration option. To have Plasma5 obey it requires autoload=false be included under [Module-kscreen] in ~/.config/kded5rc. Two more ways to globally decrease resolution are via xrandr's --fbmm and --dpi options (which also require the autoload=false override to be effective in Plasma5). xrandr --dpi 120 will increase text height and width 25% over the Xorg default of 96, so if you actually want a doubling in text height, try xrandr --dpi 192. Sometimes rounding errors appear, so the declared DPI may differ by 1 from what xrandr in a terminal will report. To obtain a precise DPI is more reliable by using --fbmm. To double text height on a 620mm by 349mm 28" screen, try xrandr --fbmm 310x175. Adjust as desired for whatever size your 3840x2160 screen actually is, or what magnification level ultimately works best for you. I've been putting whatever xrandr script I require for openSUSE use into /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.d/. The KDM greeter is not affected by this script, but the X sessions are. (Where to put it in openSUSE so that the greeter is affected by it I have yet to determine.) ...
Sorry, but with no network and invisible text on the screen life is a bit difficult. Any suggestion or pointers would be appreciated. As an aside, I attempted to run the Alienware on board diagnostics and was again presented with the unreadable small text. I did read the Alienware manuals and see no reference to screen resolution.
[1] video= works with Grub v0.97.x. Whether same works similarly with other bootloaders I have tested only so far as to know it does have the desired impact with Grub2 at least in certain environments. It may be that Grub2's gfxmode as same or similar impact and may be substituted to reach the same desired result. video= is not limited to specifying the VESA modes that bootloaders themselves are limited to using, but may specify any mode supported by a connected display. -- "The wise are known for their understanding, and pleasant words are persuasive." Proverbs 16:21 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org