Nvidia drivers and setting up custom resolution.
 

Hey LQ,

I've just installed the latest amd64 debian version onto my system. I've installed kde-plasma-desktop and am in the GUI now.

I'd like to set my screen resolution to fit my screen, which is 2560x1080. I'm started to read some guides using xrandr and such but none have worked according to the instructions. Before I get into this any further I was curious if installing the nvidia drivers would solve this issue for me.

There are basically 2 ways to make this decision. Philosophically some people desire to have zero Non Foss software in their system so they do not use nVidia's proprietary drivers. Others, myself included, consider such proprietary drivers well within the scope of the GPL and prefer the improved performance and control inherent in the manufacturer's own drivers. The included application "nvidia-settings" makes setting resolution easy and it will generate an xorg.conf to make the change permanent if it is run as root. Also there exists at least 2 other methods for providing "persistence" for your settings. If highest performance especially 3D Acceleration is important to you, you may wish to try the appropriate version of nVidia's own.

Great thank you. I want the performance as I am trying to switch from win7 to debian but haven't been able to due to lack of gaming performance.

Excellent. Good luck in your endeavors. It may help to tell you my similar journey. As soon as I installed nVidia's drivers (many years ago) some games ran better in Linux and some in Windows. Over a 2-3 year period, some was due to advances in Linux as a whole and some in me, it evolved to where I no longer boot Windows for gaming at all. I have to say that part of that accomplishment is that I no longer blindly buy AAA titles. Graphics is cool and all but Gameplay trumps all and the time it takes for Linux to catch up to games designed only for Windows has diminished thanks to Steam and Wine.

Thank you.

Yes and Game Engines that can compile directly into Linux binaries has helped a lot as well. Unity3d is awesome. I've done a bunch of tutorials for it and it seems pretty straight forward.

We can likely thank Gabe Newell for that.