Nvidia proprietary driver DPI settings

English Hardware
1

Hello, all after a long hiatus Glad to be back :slight_smile: but on to my question, I have installed the Nvidia proprietary driver and well, I’m having one issue, everything (save for a few icons) are very large, larger than it should be. Now the resolution is marked as correct (1920x1080) but the Dimensions are wrong, Current Nvidia Prop drivers are saying 351x191 millimeters with 139x144 Dots per inch. running

xdpyinfo | grep -B2 resolution

with the Nouveau driver reports 508x285 millimeters with 96x96 Dots per inch, This is the look that I want to achieve (the look of the Nouveau driver that is) I have been attempting to follow the solution mapped out here

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg#Display_size_and_DPI

with no success, (x and the gui refuse to start) So I’m obviously messing something up/not doing it right and I ask all you wonderful people for your input :slight_smile: Thanks.

2

Which Xorg snippet did you try? Specifically, did you try the following?

Proprietary NVIDIA driver

DPI can be set manually if you only plan to use one resolution (DPI calculator):

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier             "Monitor0"
    Option                 "DPI" "96 x 96"
EndSection

You can manually set the DPI adding the options below on /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf (inside Device section):

Option              "UseEdidDpi" "False"
Option              "DPI" "96 x 96"
3

Thank you for the speedy reply! I don’t have a20-nvidia.conf file I edited 50-monitor.conf file to read

# Having multiple "Monitor" sections is known to be problematic. Make
# sure you don't have in use another one laying around e.g. in another
# xorg.conf.d file or even a generic xorg.conf file. More details can
# be found in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32430.
#
 Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "Default Monitor"
   Option    "DPI" "96 x 96" 
#  ## If your monitor doesn't support DDC you may override the
#  ## defaults here
#  #HorizSync 28-85
#  #VertRefresh 50-100
#
#  ## Add your mode lines here, use e.g the cvt tool
#
#EndSection

I just un-commented the Section "Monitor and added the Option “DPI” “96 x 96” to the file that was already in place. Is the syntax wrong? or did I just edited the wrong file?

4

You’re best advised to create a custom Xorg file so that it doesn’t get overwritten by a package update. I’m thinking that you may need to disable the EDID-derived DPI value is well…

Option              "UseEdidDpi" "False" 
Option              "DPI" "96 x 96"
5

Well ended up fixing it following the instructions here

http://askubuntu.com/questions/217758/how-to-make-an-xorg-conf-file

so now my monitor section of the xorg.conf file looks as so

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
    Option         "DPI" "96 x 96"
EndSection
6

Also deano_ferrari what section of the xorg.conf file would I add these options? thanks :slight_smile:

7

You forgot to uncomment the “EndSection” line:

# Having multiple "Monitor" sections is known to be problematic. Make
# sure you don't have in use another one laying around e.g. in another
# xorg.conf.d file or even a generic xorg.conf file. More details can
# be found in https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32430.
#
 Section "Monitor"
   Identifier "Default Monitor"
   Option    "DPI" "96 x 96" 
#  ## If your monitor doesn't support DDC you may override the
#  ## defaults here
#  #HorizSync 28-85
#  #VertRefresh 50-100
#
#  ## Add your mode lines here, use e.g the cvt tool
#
#EndSection

or did I just edited the wrong file?

It doesn’t matter which file you edit, and you can also create a new file with an arbitrary name (it must end in .conf though), like e.g. 20-nvidia.conf.
I’d prefer the latter because it makes it easier to revert the changes (just delete the file).

8

As mentioned already in deano_ferrari’s quote:

You can manually set the DPI adding the options below on /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf (inside Device section):

Option              "UseEdidDpi" "False" 
Option              "DPI" "96 x 96"

AFAIK you’d need to add ‘Driver “nvidia”’ too to your Device section to make it work…

9

Ah Thank you wolfi323, figured it was something small I was missing, Thanks for pointing that out :wink: