Just installed Mint 19.2 on my Dell Precision M6400 with nVidia Quadro FX3700 graphics.

As the title says, I have only one choice (1920 x 1200) resolution which is not for my eyes. Clicking on the drop down list in the "Display" settings box does nothing. There is also a "Detect Displays" button which also does nothing.

I'm in the process of D/L a driver package from nVidia, but the file name indicates it's the same driver I currently have installed.

Suggestions welcome....

Thanks,
Wolf

Update:
The file I D/L has a .Run extension.... being a newbie at this I simply double clicked the file. A text box of sorts came up where the file has been "loading" for about an hour now.... It's only loaded about 25%. Is this normal?

Is this the native resolution of your screen?
If yes, don't change it.
What you really want is to change the DPI settings.
Have a look here (one search result for "linux mint change dpi").

When I installed Windows XP first, the default screen resolution was also 1920x1200. I changed it to something more comfortable on my eyes in about 30 seconds..... after 19 versions of Linux Mint, is this not possible???

While I was playing with this, an update from nVidia was installed to configure the X server display. I was able to select 1440x900 resolution, but when I move my mouse close to the screen edge the display pans over showing me hidden wallpaper. I don't need to see this and it drives me nuts because what I actually do want to see slides partially out of view until I use the mouse to pan back again.

Under the advanced settings I can set "viewportin" "viewportout", and "panning". If I play with these settings I can actually stop the panning, but only for this session. On reboot the panning effect always returns no matter what I do or how many times I "save x server configuration". it's broken.

I see.

Then you need to install the proprietary Nvidia driver.
Make sure you do it the way Linux Mint recommends.

You might want to read up on why there's problems with Nvidia under Linux.

OK..... I tried this once but it was also a can of worms.

1) Do I need to remove the current video driver b4 installing a new one? If so, how do I do that?

2) How do I "stop the X server" in Mint 19.2 and not end up in an unresponsive black screen?

Thanks,
Wolf

Before going to all the trouble of replacing the driver, it would be helpful to know which desktop environment you are using: Cinnamon, MATE or Xfce.

I use MATE. If your DE is also MATE, then you can enlarge the font by going to the Control Center, clicking on Appearance, and then clicking on the Fonts tab. There are five font choices: Application font, Document font, Desktop font, Window title font, and Fixed width font. The long rectangle beside Application font will probably have Noto Sans Regular in the center and 10 at the right side. Click on the rectangle, and you will get a Pick-a-font window. Close to the bottom of the window, there is a slider bar, the number 10 and - and + buttons. Click on the + button to increase the font size to something acceptable for your eyes. My preference is 16, but yours may be different. Click on select to make the size permanent. Then do the same to all the other font choices.

It's been a while since I used Cinnamon. It has a font scaling window that enlarges fonts. And Xfce uses something different for enlarging fonts.

Good luck.

^ It is not what OP wants apparently.

Which tutorial is that? Link please, and the exact steps where you got stuck.

I'm running Mint 19.2 Cinnamon.

Changing the font size (at least in Windows) doesn't always make everything on the screen easier to view.... I would rather change the resolution to affect everything.

I don't know what OP is.

Perhaps I could find that specific guide which failed to help me, but it's not in my interest to revisit.

Here is my current situation in attempting to stop the screen from constantly panning.

As stated above, I can play around with the nVidia X Server settings and eventually get the 1440x900 (scaled) resolution that I want, and the panning affect stops, but only for that session. On reboot the settings have changed and the panning is back.

There are many posts on the net about this problem related to nVidia not saving settings, but the only claimed "cure" I found thus far entails editing a config file and copying it to the correct directory. Unfortunately, I do not have permission to edit, copy, rename, or delete any file I want to work with using File Manager... I can't even create a directory.

I find this especially frustrating! How does a person get anything done with this OS? Do you have to run all these simple operations from the terminal command line? How do I login each and every time with full permission to do anything I want to do on my computer with my OS? (no security speeches please).

So, getting back to the screen resolution issue, I have D/L the driver package from nVidia and it has a .run extension. To run it I need to "exit the X server" and then type in a command from Terminal to execute the file "as root".

How do I exit the x server please?

In Terminal, when I type "sudo service lightdm stop" it lands me at a black screen with a single blinking cursor top left... no keyboard input accepted... have to reboot to exit.

"sudo service mdm stop" = Failed to stop mdm.service: Unit mdm.service not loaded.

This 1440x900 screenshot shows many things, among which:

1. Quite old NVidia GPU, G84/GeForce 8600 GT
2. OS is *buntu 18.04.x, on which Mint 19.x is based
3. DDX (X driver) in use is "modesetting", the upstream default FOSS driver applicable to AMD, Intel and NVidia GPUs
4. /etc/X11/ contains no xorg.conf* content that would affect display mode or DDX employed
5. Kernel cmdline includes video=1440x900@60, which puts the kernel framebuffer into 1440x900 when KMS kicks in during init
6. X startup employs a custom xrandr script "setup" that would put X into 1440x900 mode if it wasn't in that mode to begin with
7. Display's native mode is 1920x1200, while current mode is 1440x900
8. Plymouth is disabled via kernel cmdline

What is not apparent is 1440x900 was achieved without using any GUI setup tools. The TDE desktop is simply using what Xorg provided, all of which is done automagically using FOSS, except for the 1440x900 display mode override, and except for xrandr setting 96 logical (not physical) DPI, which is the X default (and thus superfluous).

If OP is interested in more detailed explanation of what is shown, and/or why I did this, he is welcome to PM me.

Attached Thumbnails

 

In that case it is not in my interest to help.
Good Bye!

Hey ondoho... not sure why you seem to be offended... I simply see no benefit in re-reading all the guides that lead me nowhere. If you however think it's worth the time, be my guest.

The first two links suggested terminal commands that either crashed my system (see previous post), or returned error messages. The last link suggests using a (Linux) nVidia update package which I could never implement because I seem to have broken packages. This caused me to waste a lot of time trying to resolve. At the terminal command screen I'm constantly informed there are no broken packages, nothing to update, nothing to fix, nothing to remove... but Synaptic always tells me it can't proceed with nVidia.current because of broken packages.

https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/801

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...-nvidia-driver

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...driver-401701/

https://tutorialforlinux.com/2019/08...er-easy-guide/

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=127845

There are quite a lot more links I went through when searching "exit X server" or "stop X server", but they are mostly very repetitive. Even though I tried filtering only posts within the last year, most of the info relates to older versions of Mint, or completely different flavors of Linux.

Ever since you suggested that I need to install the proprietary nVidia driver package, I have been endeavouring to do just that... and I'm stuck at exactly the same place I was 4 days ago... how does one stop the X server.

Thanks for your input...
Wolf

Are you sure you don't mean to stop the desktop session rather than the server? Normal procedure is to exit the session before choosing to stop the server. sudo service lightdm stop from within a desktop session is a brutal way to exit. Less hostile would be sudo service lightdm restart.

When a desktop session is unresponsive, usually one can Ctrl-Alt-Fn (where n=any of 2,3,4,5,6) to reach a shell prompt, login, then issue a command to force X to restart or stop without triggering anything that would create a need to reboot. If you are unable to reach a usable shell prompt this way, it's something else that needs fixing.

There's also a keyboard combination that can be configured to cause a session exit: Ctrl-Alt-BS. This may not enabled by default, or it may require striking twice in quick succession, but if it isn't, it can be enabled via a config file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/05-kbdreset.conf containing:This is an optional file and directory, so if you want it you may have to create it using superuser permission.

I cannot imagine what double clicking on the ".run" file will do. It depends on what your file manager has been set up to do when it encounters files with the ".run" file extension.

The way to build the driver is to open a terminal window, "su" to root, "cd" to the subdirectory where you downloaded the ".run" file and:
"Accept" the agreement question and, then, follow the prompts. I've found that accepting defaults works just fine.

HTH...