Hello,

I've just bought a new monitor (Dell UltraSharp 2209WA 22"), and its my first LCD monitor.

When using my old CRT, I boot slackware, and all the boot messages are clearly defined and somewhat jagged (which I really like), but this new LCD smooths the charactors completely.

I know LCD are still not up to the quality of CRT, but is there something I can do to get the pin sharp text back in the console? or is this just an LCD thing?

Actually this monitor is an E-IPS (not a TN) so it should be a good quality monitor, and its got rave reviews for its price range of £200.

I havent actually started X yet though, so I dont know what its like in a graphical environment, because I need to find out the Horisync and vertrefresh, I'll do that tomorrow now.,but I was just wondering about the smooth text in the console and how I could get that to be sharp again.

Any other thoughts on setting it up would be good as well. Are there any special options I need to put in xorg.conf for LCD? I've got an nvidia graphics card, and use the nvidia linux binary.

You have to set a framebuffer mode that uses the native resolution of your screen. Then you can choose a console font that will be LCD friendly. To use framebuffer this assuming a desire framebuffer module is set as built-in, include the following to the kernel line in your boot loader.

vga=ask

If it works, then you can permanently set it with the desire mode setting. Though using proprietary modules or drivers such as nVidia may cause stability and reliability problems when switching from console to GUI. Also it might hurt performance.

For some LCD screens, it might help to disable reading information from EDID.

Thanks that worked

If I may ask you another question, Electro..

It may be a silly question, but is 60Hz on an LCD the same as 60Hz on a CRT?

I ask because my CRT was running @85Hz and I could really detect the flicker, but on this new LCD @60Hz, I can barley notice it.

The LCD has two parts for refresh rate. One is the electronics and the other is the back light. The back light is basically the refresh rate for the LCD. The back light flickers around 100 Hz to 400 Hz. The electronics uses the refresh rate that the video card is creating for recording the frames for processing. Overall the electronics will give you a visual sense of refresh rate and the back light will give you the feeling of the refresh rate. Majority of the time the back light will resemble the refresh rate of the LCD.