Ubuntu Nvidia XGL Beryl Twinview June 10, 2007
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Ubuntu Nvidia XGL Beryl Twinview How To is a document which describes how you can have a Linux System running Ubuntu (or any other Linux distro) with both XGL eye-candy effects and twinview from Nvidia in order to see your movies in your flat  32'' cd TV.

 

 

There are many articles  describing  how you can install XGL Beryl in Nvidia cards. One of these is:

http://wiki.beryl-project.org/index.php/Install/Ubuntu/Edgy/XGL

After you have eye-candy XGL + Beryl running, we are ready to enable twinview…

The test system setup is this:

1 Nvidia 8800 GTS graphic card conneced to one LG 19'' Monitor (L194WT) throuth DVI and one flat LG lcd TV 42''.

After many hours of testing etc I ended to have XGL + Twinview up and running with the following xorg.conf:

 

# Xorg configuration

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "Default Layout"
        Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
        Option         "XGL" "true"
EndSection

Section "Files"

        # path to defoma fonts
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi"
    FontPath        "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi"
    FontPath        "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "i2c"
    Load           "bitmap"
    Load           "ddc"
    Load           "extmod"
    Load           "dbe"
    Load           "freetype"
    Load           "glx"
    Load           "int10"
    Load           "type1"
    Load           "vbe"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
        Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "LG"
    ModelName      "LG L194WT"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 83.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    # HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "LG"
    HorizSync       31.0 - 61.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 75.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Videocard0"
        Driver      "nvidia"
        Option      "NoLogo" "true"
        Option      "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
        Option      "DRI"     "true"
        Option      "GARTSize" "128"
        Option      "AllowGLXWithComposite" "True"
        Option      "backingstore" "True"
        Option      "CursorShadow" "1"
        Option      "Coolbits" "1"
        Option      "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
        Option      "RenderAccel" "True"
        Option      "TripleBuffer" "True"
        Option      "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP, CRT"
        Option      "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "metamodes" "CRT: 1360x768 +1440+66, DFP: 1440x900 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1440x900" "1360x768" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
        Group 0
        Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
        Option         "Composite"   "True"
EndSection

 

Watch the line with the option:

Option      "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"

This is for showing GDM on the monitor display (not the TV). You must have the latest nvidia drivers in order to have this  working.

Now you have both XGL and twinview working, so with an application like linuxmce (http://linuxmce.com/) or MythTV (http://www.mythtv.org/) or SageTV (http://sagetv.com/) you can have a linux Media Center System with eye-candy XGL effects…