Using Puppy Linux Quickpet to Support Dual-Head Displays

Lucid Puppy dual head display

These days, I use the lightweight and reliable Puppy Linux (Lucid and Precise) just about everywhere I go. Be it booting from USB or from re-writable DVD or CD-ROM. With the end of support for Windows XP, April 8th, 2014, Puppy Linux has become even more important to my day-to-day computing.

One problem I have encountered in the past was dual-head displays (dual monitor desktops) and Puppy’s seemingly lack of support. Well, after much frustration, I discovered that it is an easy fix. Providing you download the right driver for your video card.

My frustration began when trying to figure out the exact model of my card. Rather than open up the desktop case and locate the information on the card, it is easier to first try to enter a command in the terminal. You can find out more information about your hardware by running the Linux command:

lspci

So open your terminal and type:

lspci

Sample lspci return in ROXterm terminal, Lucid Puppy

This will display information about the pci buses on your system and the devices connected to them. lspci might return a lot of information. Look for something that looks like your video card such as ATI or Nvidia.

To expand your results, you can try:

lspci -v

The -v option stands for verbose. This command will return more details about your devices.

Quickpet comes with the base Lucid Puppy

I find searching for information about the GPU this way to be helpful but it lacks details. I am not sure how lspci treats ATI cards, but lspci will only show the general class series for Nvidia cards. According to my results from lspci, I needed to look for GeForce 6800 XT drivers for Linux. Thanks to Google, I found that there are numerous models of GPUs that fall under the 6800 XT, known as the 6-series. According to Nvidia, I needed driver version 185.18.36.

As is the norm for Nvidia, their website is not much help with finding the drivers for your Linux machine. I did not even find Nvidia-185 drivers anywhere.

Luckily for Lucid Puppy, there is a nifty utility called Quickpet. Inside Quickpet there is the option to lookup different drivers. Quickpet can even test your GPU to discover what model card you are using and suggest a recommended driver to download.

I suggest letting Quickpet test your card and following what it recommends. You can download the driver right from Quickpet. You may need to restart the x-server after the download and install is complete.

Screenshot of dual head display.

Once installed, if you have an Nvidia GPU, open the Nvidia X Server Settings Wizard, found under the Setup Menu in Lucid Puppy. Select X Server Display Configuration. Select your second monitor and hit Configure. You should set the configuration to TwinView. I set the monitor position to Absolute. Hit Apply and Quit.

Puppy Linux with dual head monitors.

Comcast-TWC Just Can't Take On Over-The-Top Alone

The world keeps getting smaller in the media industry. Thanks to an ongoing trend in the business characterized by acquisition, mergers, layoffs, and the all-around eating up of companies by some larger group in the supposed response to online competition. Yup the content on Netflix, Hulu (known as over-the-top or OTT programmers) is so compelling that it’s luring away precious viewers from the middle class realities and faux-real soap opera staples on the basic cable networks.

Hulu and Netflix don't F around, poor Comcast-TWC :'(

Today’s media industry merger business talk is dominated by the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal. At the moment, the two multichannel video programming distributors (MVPD) are preparing to face-off in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on the proposed $45 billion dollar deal. 

Geez Netflix, you savvy OTT'ers, give the cable operators a break! The MVPDs have to make some vague promises about the open Internet and keeping broadcasting afloat to the politicians and judges who are going to green-light the deal after seeing the Comcast-TWC CEOs sweat.

But enough of all that. We’ll save the gory details for the next blogpost about the layoffs that are sure to come. Or maybe the DISH Network-DIRECT-TV deal? Hmm... The world keeps getting smaller and smaller.

Broadcast Engineering Finds New Home At TV Technology

This post has to do with a little known publication known as Broadcast Engineering. A free, ad-supported publication aimed a the broadcast television engineer and technicians, like myself. The magazine came monthly to my desk in the Master Control room. I once wrote for the magazine... well four articles, then I realized the demand and time crunch was too high to add to my full-time job. Feel free to read an article.

Maybe the last issue of Broadcast Engineering

It was not until today that I discovered that the magazine had been acquired by New Bay Media, the publisher of a competing publication, TV Technology. After digging through TV Technology’s archive, I found an article dated January 7th, 2014 that provides a brief note about the acquisition. This left me wondering as to the fate of my articles published on the Broadcast Engineering website. I searched and found that they are still alive, under the TV Technology branding.

It is sad and yet expected to note that the magazine was consumed without much notice. In a tweet dated October 25th, 2013, @BE_magazine announced that Broadcast Engineering will no longer be published. After 54 years of publication, the magazine ceased and it was announced in a tweet! 

It's with heavy hearts today that we announce Broadcast Engineering will no longer be published. Thanks for 54 great years!...
— BroadcastEngineering (@BE_magazine) October 25, 2013

Not a sign of the things to come in the media industry but more of a death nail. All those signs have been waving wildly since 2007 and those of us in the broadcast television industry who have stuck around despite such warnings are now witnessing the fatalities and counting the bodies. Probably not long until mine is piled up on the heap also.

In the face of such odds, we’ll keep marching on as always, making sure the signals reach the viewers, or at least until some other road opens up somewhere.