Dual display under Ubuntu

Well, I have finally obtained a goal I've waited impatiently for over five years to surmount - I'm writing this blog entry on a Linux system with two wonderful displays running as an extended desktop. Windows has done this for me for years, yet Linux has resisted. Ubuntu 8.04 was 'better', yet still created some weird scrolling modes until this morning.

My setup:
1) self-built PC with Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, 2GB DDR2-800, Asus P5K
2) EVGA 8800GT Superclocked with 512MB GDDR3
3) Ubuntu 8.04 which dual-boots with Windows-XP SP3
4) Primary Display via DVI - Samsung 730B (1280x1024)
5) Secondary Display via DVI - ViewSonic Q20wb (1680x1050)

Of course this triumph isn't really mine - I just found the correct pieces to make it work. The process is almost painless, and I think the Xorg folks (or team porting to Ubuntu) have finally got it right. Read any xorg.conf file from last year and it had a hundred lines of bizarre text which didn't belong there ... I mean, why should I include a line saying in an old 2-bit, 4-color video mode circa 1985 I want to support 1280x1024 and so on? The xorg.conf file is now nice and clean, letting the software assume such things.

Step 1) Backup the Working XORG.CONF file
Ubuntu 8.04 installed with basic support for the primary "generic display", which was the 1280x1024 Samsung. Gone are even the struggle to avoid the 800x600 "low-res" mode when displays don't have hardware sync info in the xorg.conf file. So start by saving the known-good file - this is something you should always do as it allows recovery should your x-server crash upon reboot:

• sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig

Step 2) Use Synaptic Package Manager to install EnvyNG
I installed both the envng-core and envyng-gtk - not sure if both required, but I have the disk space. This adds the menu Applications | System Tools | EnvyNG. Running this asks for admin password and installs enough packages to rebuild various NVIDA resources.

Step 3) Run nvidia_settings
Well, here is where the magic starts to fall down. After installing those files you will find the option NVIDIA X Server Settings under your System | Administration menu. Run it and you see this magically enticing popup:

Ahh, almost like Windows-XP now, yes? Catch is this method of launching the tool won't have permission to modify your xorg.conf files or even save to /etc/X11. Thus anything you change now will fail to be saved. I can imagine many a frustrated person seeing the error message and just assuming the drivers won't work.

So you need to run this command in a terminal window instead:

• sudo nvidia-settings

Which launches the same tool with the correct permissions to update your configuration. I chose not to save the changes to xorg.conf, but to xorg.conf.dual. Regardless, the settings won't take effect right away anyway.

Step 4) Organize /etc/X11
Perhaps this isn't required, but it is my habit learned over the years; I used a terminal window to insure I had four versions of xorg.conf:

• /etc/X11/xorg.conf.orig is a copy of the 'natural' file created during install which I never change
  
• /etc/X11/xorg.conf.single is a copy of the xorg.conf active before I ran nvidia_settings with only my single primary display (it might equal xorg.conf.orig - I don't really care)
• /etc/X11/xorg.conf.dual is the output of nvidia_settings, which at this point might work ... or might not.
  
• /etc/X11/xorg.conf, which I manually overwrite at this time by copying xorg.conf.dual over it.

These simple to comprehend names often in the past saved my bacon when fiddling with my xorg.conf created an unusable configuration. A simple file copy from a recovery root login can over-write the bad xorg.conf with a know good one, allowing me to restart the GUI.

Step 5) restart X-server
Log yourself out, then back in to see if your wonderful new dual-display desktop works.

Results:

• With my 8800GT, results were superb with a nice extended desktop 3000 by 1000 pixels across my two displays (1620+1280 by 1050 & 1024 to be exact)
• However, I tried a second time with an old gForce 5500 and ended up with a config which never worked quite right. I would set up the two old CRT for a dual x-server side-by-side, try to force both to a modest 1024 x768 and somehow the result is always two x-servers in twin-view mode piled on top of each other at two different resolutions. The side-by-side extended desktop works fine under Windows XP.
  

HP LaserJet P2015 Extra RAM

I bought myself a nice Hp LaserJet P2015DN, which can print duplex or both side of the paper. It's a pretty sweet printer - $399 total (from newegg.com) and it has some nice economy modes which print the text in screened gray tones to save toner. It also has direct Ethernet, which is super nice since I have 5 computers at home (3 actively used).

However, there is one 'interesting' thing which occurred during this purchase.

The printer comes with 32MB of RAM and a number of people who reviewed the printer at newegg said this wasn't enough for full graphic pages or complex fonts. So I purchased an extra 256MB of the DDR-66 RAM from kingston.com for $15 with free shipping (part number: KTH-LJ2015/256)

The reason this is 'interesting' is HP part number CB423A for my printer was priced at

... wait for it

... wait for it

... us$599.00 for the same thing! $15 vs $599 ... hmmm, let me think, which should I chose? The Kingston part even had the HP number printed as a cross reference ON THE PACKAGE!

Well, to be honest HP offered me an instant rebate/discount of $300 if I bought it online, so it would have been only $299. Those HP dudes are nice dudes (or dudettes) to offer me such a discount! Would save me $300 bucks even.

I am still here

I am still battling computers, but have found Wiki formats more satisfying than a blog - so you can find me at lynnlinse.wikispaces.com

I have five quad-cores and three dual-cores (plus other misc systems) all slaving away for me, all running in fairly low-cost setups. Ubuntu's up to 7.10 and has literally evolved to the point where anyone satisfied with OpenOffice and internet access will be happy with it. I use OpenOffice all the time - am writing odd fiction (which I'll soon start putting up at my Wiki site).

Two months ago I finally upgraded my "fun system" away from an AMD A64 solo-core to a Intel Q6600 quad-core. I also abandoned the old XP-OEM license I technically lost the right to use years ago. Instead last year I bought (horded) two legal OEM Windows XP Pro licenses which came with a free VISTA Business upgrade. Cost was $108 each, which isn't bad considering the cost of a "real" VISTA license. Just remember that such cheap OEM licenses don't allow changing motherboards ... which is why I waited until my Q6600 to install & activate.

I did try VISTA again in Jan 2008 when I swapped in the new hardware, but couldn't even last the week as one doesn't expect a quad-core to run slower than a Celeron - plus my backup app hosed the VISTA filesystem - odd, it created a 20GB backup in a portion of the filesystem with PATH NAMES TOO LONG FOR VISTA TO HANDLE! Shocking, I have no clue why an operating system - especially one as over-bearing as VISTA - would allow this. But using VISTA's explorer or even CHKDSK, VISTA just couldn't show, delete or trash the directory created. So I reformatted the VISTA away and went back to Windows XP Pro.

Since all the reviews still say WinXP is 30-40% faster for games anyway, this seems the best answer. I occasionally play Morrowind or Oblivion and see a huge difference in graphics refresh (aka - detect none) compared to my old A64 at 2GHz plus ATIX1600. But, now that graphics are blinding I detect the hiccups where the hard-disk (a Raptor pinging away) needs to thrash in a new game map. Maybe I'll look into RAID 0 some day.

If you're curious, my home play-system now includes (prices as-of Dec-2007):

• Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz ($274)
• Asus P5K with Intel P35 chipset ($126)
• EVGA/NVidia 8800GT factory over-clocked ($290)
• 2x1GB Curcial DDR2-1066 RAM ($114)
• Windows OEM XP plus free Vista Business upgrade ($108)
  

The case is my old (but beautiful) Coolmaster Wave, and I reused all the drives, fans, power supply etc.

In theory both the CPU and MoBo support DDR3 and faster than DDR2-1066, but the cost of anything above DDR2-1066 was too crazy to consider. As I'm just running Windows XP
Pro (with legal option to run it or VISTA) I've not seen the value in more than 2GB RAM yet either.

Also, this Asus includes some nice auto-over/under clock features ... which is nice since my machine tends to spend more time editing OpenOffice documents than gaming. Thus my Q6600 generally is running down at the 1.4Ghz range and the system chews up about 120-watts idling, whereas the old A64+X1600GPU system idled at 95-watts.

Secret of Intel Core Duo CPU

I have 2 systems running with Q6600 Intel Core Duo Quad cores. They can crunch a lot of numbers and last price I saw for them online for only $290-310 each. Both these systems use a Asus P5B-VM uATX motherboard, 2GB of DDR2-800 RAM, Enermax Liberty 400w modular power supply, 80GB SATA drive and Ubuntu Linux 7.04.

The Sneaky Secret of the Core Duo
I have since discovered the secret of the Core Duo - it is a rather smart (but sneaky) marketing move by Intel. My first Core Duo was a E6300 running at 1.8Ghz. I remember reading all the magazine reviews that showed the 1.8 kicking the butt of AMD's running at 2+Ghz. It was like Intel had found a new secret sauce for making processors. The magazines played along and all bemoaned how AMD was doomed unless they could counter this brilliant new secret sauce.

But I now know the secret. At work I happen to have a few Pentium D Dual-Core running at 3.6GHz - a nice number; just happens to be twice the rated speed of the E6300. However, if you run some old-fashioned MIPS/FLOPS hardware benchmarks - the kind magazines NEVER run anymore - you will find the Core Duo at 1.8Ghz pretty much matches the Dual-Core PD at 3.6Ghz at basic integer tests, and does only 50-60% as well at the floating point tests. So clearly, the Core Duo E6300 has portions of the chip running at 1.8GHz and portions running at 3.6Ghz (double-clocked). Such technology is easy these days - 10/100Mhz Ethernet hardware runs with a 25Mhz crystal and uses a clock multiplier to gain the 100Mhz cycles. Intel must be using a 1.8Ghz crystal and clock multiplier to run portions of the chip at 3.6Ghz. This also makes sense given the Core Duo concept came out of Intel's "mobile" design team - people who realized that running different portions of the chip at different speeds helps cut power usage and heat generation.

The really brilliant (& somewhat risky) marketing move was to call a chip like the E6300 a "1.8GHz chip" even though it ran at 3.6Ghz ... this is what caused the big media back-lash against AMD. Had the magazines tested the E6300 as a 3.6Ghz chip ... the test results would have been disappointing compared to a true 3.6Ghz Pentium D dual-core. It would have shown the Core Duo as a chip which sacrificed performance for lower power.

However, since it was called a 1.8Ghz chip, all the tests were showing up as 30 to 70% "better than expected". Magzines had no problems with the apples-to-oranges comparison of a 1.8Ghz Intel out running a 2+Ghz AMD since the AMD had (on paper) a higher clock rate. But what they didn't understand was that they were actually comparing a slightly crippled 3.6Ghz Intel against the 2+Ghz AMD; of course the crippled 3.6Ghz chip would beat out the 2+Ghz AMD

Faster RAM helped Vista rating

In a previous posting, I mentioned how my daughter's new PC came with DDR2-533 SDRAM. Well, http://newegg.com had a sale on DDR2-800 SDRAM; Patriot 2GB (2x1GB 1.8v) was selling for $94 a set, so I bought 2 sets.

It turns out the new HP test systems my employer buys have DDR2-533 RAM, so I donated the old 1GB from home to one of my test systems to bump it up from 1GB to 2GB. I put the second 2GB DDR2-800 into another of my AMD X2 systems which had only DDR2-667 before, moving the DDR2-667 also to work.

The Acer PC now has a Vista Windows Experience Rating of 5.0 limited by CPU. Before it was 4.5 limited by memory - for some reason the CPU's rating bumped up to 5.0 from 4.9 with the RAM update. So my estimated cost of $740 went up to $850 after the RAM and shipping.

As another side note, I ran a boinc client on this Acer for a few weeks and with its dual CPU running at 100% load 24 hours a day, the CPU temperature hovered around 125 degree F. All of my other dual-core systems can run at 100% load being only 100-105 degree F, but they all have better copper coolers. So I'm assuming the noisy, 70mm stock CPU cooler in the Acer 380 isn't the best. However, if you don't plan to run the dual cores flat out (and my familt will NEVER do so - I'm the odd-ball doing things like that), then Acer's stock CPU cooler is fine. If you plan to do a lot of Video encoding or game playing, you may want to consider a new cooler with at least a larger fan to get better air flow with less noise.

New PC for Daughter

Well, I was planning to upgrade the internals of my Daughter's 5-year old Dell 500SC (with 1.2GHz Celeron) ... but she beat me to the punch and literally let the "magic smoke" out. The room smelled for a bit and the system was completely dead - the power supply died. So desiring a solution to last the family for another 4 to 5 years, and given the cost of buying Windows Vista as an "upgrade" I decided to just find a good, low-cost stock system which came prelicensed. Plus my wife likes to touch-n-feel things before buying.

Acer Aspire E380
We found a nice "open-box" Acer Aspire E380 for $590 plus we received a free $50 free gift card. It has a nice "stainless-steel" looking case with black trim - very sharp & wife-approved. Although just manufactured in Jan 2007, I guess this particular model is being axed so BestBuy was selling off the floor model. I've had several Acer notebooks in the past and consider Acer quality acceptable - but their web site and documentation has gone very badly downhill. Off the shelf, the E380's specs were:

• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4200+ (2.20GHz)
• Acer EM61SM/EM61PM Motherboard, based on NVidia 6100V chipset
  
• Hitachi 320GB SATA 7400RPM Hard Drive
• 2x512KB DDR2 PC2-4300 (533) RAM
• Windows Home Premium (Experience Rating 2.9 limited by graphics)

Home Tweaks:
My first step was to add a PCI-Express-based NVidia 7600GT graphics card with 12 hardware pixel shaders and 256MB DDR3 RAM (worth about $99 online). This boosted the Windows rating from 2.9 up to 4.5, with the rating now being limited by the rather pathetic system RAM. The 7600 is rated at 5.9; the X2 processor is rated 4.9 and even the stock SATA hard drive is rated a 5.6. Not bad for a computer costing less than $600.

But NVidia suggests a minimum 350-watt power supply with 18A of 12vdc power for the 7600GT, while the E380 came with only a 300-watt supply split between 10Amp and 13Amp 12vdc rails. Given the old PC died from power supply failure and the E380's stock power supply was blowing some pretty hot air out the back as-is, I upgraded to an EnerMax 400-watt ELT400AWT ($75 online). This is the 5th system I've used this supply in and I have been pleased with the results. The ELT400AWT has modular cables for the drive power, a large 120mm fan, and after installation is blowing nice, cool air out of the Acer E380. It is rated for a total 12vdc of 30A being split with up to 20A on either of two 12vdc rails. That should satisfy both the NVidia 7600 and the DVR card I may add later. Since my daughter doesn't play PC games I don't foresee ever needing to add higher graphics power to this PC. Actually, I was a bit surprised at the temperature difference between the stock and EnerMax supply - since both were running the same load I can only assume the stock supply had a super low efficiency.

I added a quiet 120mm door fan with external filter. I like the Antec Tri-Cool fans, as they include a small switch to select 1 of 3 speeds (and therefore 1 of 3 sound levels). As much as I hate the fan cable linking the door to the case, blowing air directly onto the top of the PCI cards and the various chip sets has such a noticeable impact on lowering temperatures that I feel obligated to do this. Luckily the Acer has a perforated door grill which allowed the fan to be attached via 1.25-inch machine screws without cutting a 120mm hole in the metal door.

The only tweak remaining is the slow RAM. While the Acer EM61SM Mother board has no real manual (even online), from everything I can find it should support DDR2-800. But I'm in no hurry ... as soon as I find a use for the old DDR2-533 RAM I'll buy 1 or 2GB of DDR2-800 to swap into this system. Until then it runs pretty well.

Issues to watch for in buying "off-the-shelf" systems
With margins being squeezed, builders like Dell, HP or Acer tend to skimp on the specs that normal people don't look at. The difference between a $600 and $1200 system is rarely enough to justify spending the extra $600. In my case, I prefer to buy the $600 system and spend another $200-300 to make a system better than the $1200 one would have been.

Things I have found "lacking" in stock systems:

1. Slow hard drives - I've had a few stock systems come with 5400RPM instead of 7400RPM. When was the last time you saw a Dell or HP add mention the RPM of the drive? They don't - just the drive size. Even launching the "Device Manager" won't show you the drive speed; you need to find the model number and search the web (I did this for the E380 and was happy to see the drive was SATA and 7400RPM.) Would swapping drives void your stock warranty? I'm not sure, but I would guess not.
   
2. Slow system RAM - to be honest, this Acer E380 is the first system I seen that came with such under-powered RAM. But again I guess it is to be expected since all the big-box shops just list the RAM size and maybe the DIMM's used. Launching the "Device Manager" also won't show you the drive speed; I guess the only thing you could do in the store is reboot to the system BIOS and see what it says - but I wager it just says "auto" for speed. Would swapping memory sticks void your stock warranty? I'm not sure, but I would guess not.
3. On-Board graphics - of course this is a rather common and easily detectable issue. These days one should assume the built-in graphics are useful only for normal office applications and watching videos. In truth, this is best since the extra graphics power needed for gaming literally puts a "power tax" on all usage - adding to people's electric bills whether they need that GPU power or not. Would adding a plug-in graphics card void your stock warranty? No - I assume ... unless it overloads the stock power supply.
4. Power supplies - while I always assumed the "stock" supplies would be less-than ideal, until I discovered the extreme "hot-exhaust-air" difference between the Acer E380's stock power supply and the rather modest-cost ($75) after-market power supply I did not think the gap was so great. But clearly the stock supply was creating a good deal more heat, which ultimately means it is running at LESS efficiency. To bad my AV power meter is back in Minnesota so I couldn't compare the actual watts-consumption difference. Would swapping in a good power supply void your stock warranty? I'm sure it WILL, which creates a sad irony ... if your good graphic card fries the stock power supply (and you remove the card BEFORE getting the system serviced) then the maker would need to fix the "bad" power supply. Yet if you put in a good supply which won't burn or cause such warranty repairs, you void the warranty.
5. Microsoft License - a little known issue is that buying a "stock PC" purchased with an OEM Windows license does NOT give you the right to change motherboards or "upgrade" the computer. This is something I learned the hard way - with calls to Microsoft to overcome authentication issues with Windows XP on another old OEM system. In effect, the low-cost "royalty license" included with your stock system is tied to that motherboard - a new motherboard requires a new license ... although with my phone call and excuse that the old motherboard had burned out, the fine folks in the South Asian call center gave me codes to reauthenticate the old XP license on the new motherboard, but I should not assume that will happen a second time!
   

End Result: so by spending $540 (PC minus gift card value) + 75 (power supply) + 100 (NVidia 7600GT) + 15 (door fan) for a total of $730 I obtained a working family computer with Microsoft Vista Home Premium and an experience rating of 4.5. If and when I update to DDR2-800 RAM the experience rating will be 5+. Given the license limitations of the OEM Vista license I was careful to buy a motherboard which should still be effective 4 years from now. With 2 PCI-express slots, 2 PCI slots, 4 DDR2 slots, 8 onboard USB ports and an AMD AM2 socket, the E380's motherboard will surely be obsolete even 2 years from now, but it should still be serviceable and effective for many years.

I doubt even spending $1100 for a "fancier" stock system from Acer or HP or Dell would have given a better result. I can still put together faster Ubuntu Linux systems from scratch for $350-450, but they don't require Windows license fees nor fancy GPU power.

Linksys Switch Quality Lately

Hmm, I've just had 2 of the small LinkSys 5-port 10/100MHz hub go bad within a month of purchase. Guess their quality is going downhill lately - time to stop buying LinkSys. To bad as they look pretty sweet and I like the look and feel.

One unit - right in front on me is EZXS55W "EtherFast 10/100 5-port Workgroup Switch". It worked a few weeks, then just stopped working Sunday. All the lights blink when my machines talk (when there is network traffic), but none of my computers can see each other. Tried many different Ethernet cables & moving cables around - no good. Temporarily swapped in an old Netgear hub and all can talk fine.

The other unit is at work - just bought it a few weeks ago and port 3 just didn't work straight out of the box. Putting only 3 devices plus uplink on it is workable, but sad to pay for 5 ports and only get 4!

I am sure there is some way to contact LinkSys and get them replaced under warranty ... but it will cost me too much (considering the original purchase price) to send this bricks back ... not including my time to do it. No, I just won't be buying anymore LinkSys products for a year or two. I figure by 2008 they'll have gotten their act back together. Such quality problems have a way of forcing big companies to reform. Maybe Cisco has just started milking LinkSys as a cash cow - cutting costs to increase profits - who knows.