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[Bug 377172] [NEW] gnome-display-properties silently broke all my hardware acceleration and movie watching

 

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Binary package hint: gnome-control-center

After upgrading to Jaunty, I tried fiddling around with the new version
of gnome-display-properties, with my laptop (1024x768 display) and an
external monitor (1680x1050 display). When attempting to place them next
to each other, gnome-display-properties displayed a cheerful note
informing me that it couldn't do that because of a problem with my
xorg.conf, but it could happily fix that problem and I really should
click "Ok". So I did.

This added a line like
  Subsection "Display"
    Virtual 2704 1050
  EndSubSection
to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf

My laptop (Thinkpad X60) has an Intel GM945, and the intel drivers top
out at a Virtual size of 2048x2048. This configuration change made them
very unhappy.

The actual symptom I experienced was that some days later, after the
next time I restarted X, I discovered that all video programs (totem,
mplayer, etc.) that I tried to start would simply crash immediately.
XVideo was broken, and none of them are set up to handle this
gracefully. 3d acceleration also appears to be broken.

I'm not sure what the best solution here is -- it seems unfortunate that
gnome-display-properties would need to "know" that intel drivers have a
particular limit on their Virtual size -- but the bug is easily
triggered, and *completely* unfathomable to a naive user. At a minimum,
the cheery message should be changed to something which includes a
warning, so that if things do get broken the user has at least a chance
of remembering and looking in the right place.

(Also, on the user experience end, I am still annoyed at gnome-display-
properties. I trusted it! It lied to me! Screw you, 'xrandr --auto'
works better anyway! Okay, thanks for letting me get that part off my
chest.)

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:2.26.0-0ubuntu3
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/usr/bin/zsh
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-11-generic x86_64

** Affects: xserver-xorg-video-intel (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New


** Tags: amd64 apport-bug
-- 
gnome-display-properties silently broke all my hardware acceleration and movie watching
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/377172
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