Exclusive Fullscreen Mode

[Aaron Plattner]

On Mon, Sep 06, 2010 at 04:29:22PM -0700, Tomas Carnecky wrote:
> On 9/6/10 8:51 PM, Roland Plüss wrote:
> > 1) What about changing resolution?
> > SDLMAME as far as I know changes the resolution while full screen and
> > some games do this too (typically commercial ones like UT*, Quake* and
> > company). I read somewhere that only root is allowed to change
> > resolution on-the-fly. Another place states only resolutions in the
> > xorg.conf are valid. What's the ground truth in this case? Can one
> > change resolution dynamically from a client application?
>
> Any user can change the resolution. The modern way is to use randr, on
> older servers you need to use xf86vidmode. Proprietary nvidia drivers
> don't use either, they have their own API for doing that.

Sorry to be pedantic about it, but this is false.  The xf86vidmode
extension is supported, and RandR (1.1) is how you switch between TwinView
"metamodes".  Typically, the RandR and VidMode mode lists will be populated
with the various single-screen modes that got validated when the server
started.

You can manipulate the mode lists using the NV-CONTROL extension, but
actual screen resolution changes are effected through one of those two
extensions.

-- Aaron