usplash displays artwork incorrectly (bad resolution)

[mon]

Hi

Usplash detects incorrectly my resolution and because of this it's ugly (fonts look a bit streched)

Using kubuntu dapper up to date in amd64

[mon (javiermon-deactivatedaccount)]

I have a tft (1280x1024)

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Hi Javier, Thanks for your bug report!

usplash runs in 640x400, which is the mode that the machine boots in during the BIOS setup and the same resolution used for things like the MS Windows startup splash.

This mode is used for compatibility as other video modes don't universally work on all hardware.

If you can to experiment you can try:

  passing vga=NNN on the bootloader commandline, however this may prevent suspend/hibernate working successfully.

  setting the "video stretch" option in the BIOS options (if there is one) which will stop the scaling that you're seeing.

[Steven Black (stevenblack141)]

Is this a laptop? A lot of laptops support an option in the BIOS to disable the stretching of lower resolutions.

Is your videocard supported by your kernel's framebuffer driver? Usplash uses the framebuffer driver, and if your graphics card isn't supported until X starts, then the best resolution possible is 640x480. Basically, this means that if your videocard isn't supported by the kernel's framebuffer driver the only way to make the fonts not look all stretched is to disable the screen stretching of low resolution graphics.

I just RTFS'ed and found that usplash does not set the screen resolution. It only reads the screen resolution. This means that you would need to set the framebuffer driver up to set the desired resolution from a kernel parameter to get a different resolution.

I read up on the framebuffer, and this can be set through the "video" kernel option. This, of course, requires that your graphics card be supported by the kernel framebuffer. If it requires the plain "VGA" driver, then it can't get better than 640x480 and with the "VESA" driver you may not have much better luck.