Sunday, July 7, 2013

Linux Mint Overscan Woes

I fired up Linux Mint 15 because my Ubuntu distribution was looking a bit dated, and it had developed an overscan problem where the edges of the screen went off the monitor. I am using an nvidia graphics card with nvidia drivers.

Problem: 
The overscan was all screwed up on my 23 inch Hannspree monitor. It was listed as device DFP-1, and no resolution I could use in the nvidia-settings GUI menu would resolve the problem.

Solution: 
I needed to set a metamode to fix the overscan. I headed over to this page, and the metamode suggested worked perfectly with "DFP-0" altered to
"DFP-1."

DFP-0: 1920x1080 { ViewPortOut=1820x1020+50+30, ViewPortIn=1920x1080 } 



  1. sudo nvidia-xconfig
  2. gksudo nvidia-settings

Then plug your custom resolution configuration into nvidia-settings like so. Note that I had to manually select the 1920x1080 resolution or the settings below it wouldn't work right:



After that, hit apply. Then click save to X configuration file.

If you lose your settings after a restart, then you may be experiencing a problem that plagued me for a long time. My solution is HERE.