"I got up to wash my *&^(% face"

[bad sector]

a familiar line from "Cecilia", not a week goes by without
something getting totally fubarred

Last month I plugged my laptop's only hdmi output into
the AvAmp which feeds the 'smart' Samsung TV. I opened
a beer and watched a movie. Now I do the same thing and
the hdmi output seems to be directed at some non-existing
additional monitor. The Av amp is being seen as a 3000x500
or so device and no settings on the laptop monitor are
possible because the mouse pointer is now on a non-existing
monitor i.e. on a device that is not a monitor.

A long time ago the kde System Settings (hardware/monitor)
allowed the simultaneous i.e. identical image output, this
kind of setting is nowhere to be seen. IT was the DEFAULT so
IT just worked! Now If I plug the laptop directly into the TV
it doesn't recognise the laptop. Both the TV and the laptop
are 1920x1080, the TV and the AvAmp are both 'smart', so the
logical conclusion is that Suse Leap is stupid?

[Carlos E.R.]

Using XFCE I get a popup, on both displays, asking me what I want to do
with them. If not, I press a key on my laptop keyboard, I forget which,
something about display change, and I get the same menu.

Works perfectly.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Sidney_Kotic]

Silly question...if you plug the HDMI from the laptop directly into the TV and
then press Ctrl-Alt-F1 on the laptop...do you get a xterm asking you to login?

Ctrl-Alt-F7 will put you back into the XWindow environment so you can muck with it.

I kind of diddle with this...use XWindows and automount a USB drive, go to the
F1 window and cd to the drive...go back to XWindow and log out. Then I can back
up my home directory and almost all the files are just sitting there idle.

[bad sector]

On 12/27/21 9:16 PM, Sidney_Kotic wrote:
> Silly question...if you plug the HDMI from the laptop directly into
> the TV and then press Ctrl-Alt-F1 on the laptop...do you get a xterm
> asking you to login?

I did, even got as far as getting a background image
up but little else. The TV doesn't recognise the (laptop)
'device' but is offering a drill to make the TV remote learn
how to control it :-)))

Anyway, the proper way to handle all this hardware
is to route EVERY source into the Av amp 1st and I
suspect that there isn't much difference between
connecting the TV directly or via the Av amp.

> Ctrl-Alt-F7 will put you back into the XWindow environment so you
> can muck with it.

With the HDMI output plugged into the Av amp I get a login
promt on the laptop, just a spinning logo or sometimes
another desktop on the TV but it's impossible to do anything
on it until you figure out that the top 10 pixels on the laptop
are the bottom of the TV image and that the mouse crosses
between them. From this I miraculously got to mouse
System-Settings on the TV and get the two screens one
over the other and finally to hit the 'mirror laptop' button.
One of the problems is that you cannot do any of this until
you make the HDMI connections which I suspect is the
reason that the 'mirror' setup used to be the default in the
first place. I don't really know what the default is but it just
used to work as it should: you plugged in the HDMI, went
to settings if needed and verified or selected the mirror option.
Now you cannot get to that dialogue!

> I kind of diddle with this...use XWindows and automount a USB drive,
> go to the F1 window and cd to the drive...go back to XWindow and log
> out. Then I can back up my home directory and almost all the files
> are just sitting there idle.

The grandchildren were over for Christmas dinner amid
the necessary pandemic constraints and all. While the
womenfolk were panicing in the kitchen I 'the techie' got
asked to plug-in some kid-movies to keep them quiet
for half an hour. Remembering that the last time it just
worked I said "no problemo" but ten minutes later took
all the wires off and stowed the laptop. I'm a very
patient type so not even the first two seconds of the
above are ever going to get repeated. I will postulate that
90%+ of users plug their Av amp or TV into the laptop
RDMI port for ONLY this: to watch EXACTLY what they
see on the laptop monitor without having to do diddley
else. And this miraculous conjunction had in fact already
been achieved but then someone had to muck it up.

[bad sector]

Thanks, I'll have to try it with XFCE, mostly because it's my
alternate DE (using it with Slackware and Artix). Are you
hinting that this is a KDE problem? I'm not saying that it's
a Suse problem, I just plain can't know which it is.

[Carlos E.R.]

On 28/12/2021 06.46, bad sector wrote:
> On 12/27/21 6:13 PM, Carlos E.R. wrote:
>> On 27/12/2021 23.44, bad sector wrote:
>>>
>>> a familiar line from "Cecilia", not a week goes by without
>>> something getting totally fubarred
>>>
>>> Last month I plugged my laptop's only hdmi output into the AvAmp
>>> which feeds the 'smart' Samsung TV. I opened a beer and watched a
>>> movie. Now I do the same thing and the hdmi output seems to be
>>> directed at some non-existing
>>> additional monitor. The Av amp is being seen as a 3000x500
>>> or so device and no settings on the laptop monitor are possible
>>> because the mouse pointer is now on a non-existing
>>> monitor i.e. on a device that is not a monitor.
>>>
>>> A long time ago the kde System Settings (hardware/monitor)
>>> allowed the simultaneous i.e. identical image output, this kind of
>>> setting is nowhere to be seen. IT was the DEFAULT so IT just
>>> worked! Now If I plug the laptop directly into the TV it doesn't
>>> recognise the laptop. Both the TV and the laptop are 1920x1080, the
>>> TV and the AvAmp are both 'smart', so the logical conclusion is
>>> that Suse Leap is stupid?
>>
>> Using XFCE I get a popup, on both displays, asking me what I want to
>> do with them. If not, I press a key on my laptop keyboard, I forget
>> which, something about display change, and I get the same menu.
>>
>> Works perfectly.
>>

>

> Thanks, I'll have to try it with XFCE, mostly because it's my
> alternate DE (using it with Slackware and Artix). Are you
> hinting that this is a KDE problem? I'm not saying that it's
> a Suse problem, I just plain can't know which it is.

No, but different desktops do things differently, and if one doesn't
work, another might work.

If it does work with XFCE and not with KDE in your case, then you should
report the bug.


--
Cheers, Carlos.

[bad sector]

I logged Leap-15.3 into XFCE and found a situation different from
kde only in the details, the underlying problem seeming very similar.
Didn't get any popups or nothing. Cnt'l-Alt F1-F6 brings up tty1-tty6
on the laptop only, each waiting for a login. Cnt'l-Alt F7 reverts to
the following departure scenario.

In the right 40% of the TV screen I get about a 300x500 image of the
left top corner of the laptop monitor, and unlike with kde I find no
way to change any of that. I have no idea if the above is the work
of the TV (Samsung UN65RU8000) or of the Av amp (Pioneer VSX1019).

I can take a snapshot, and that image is 2880x1080, the left 1920x1080
being the laptop's 1920x1080. With the wife's Apple laptop it JUST WORKS
as it did with Suse BEFORE. Not sure if it's a bug, seems more like
*design-crime* :-)

Booting Devuan or Artix with the HDMI cable connected to the Av
amp I get exeactly the laptop monitor on the TV from the outset
because default seems to mirror the laptop monitor. This I think
used to be the default with Suse also. Booting Slackware I get
diddley squat.

Addendum: Brings up another question, suppose that while trying
to figure out what goes on inside I set a low-resolution for the desktop,
this immediately makes it impossible to continue or to do anything
at all anymore because only 1/8 of rhe desktop is visible and you
cannot slew it with arrow keys or withy anything. So how do you bail
out of a mess like this? I did exactly this in Artix after confirming that
it had been set up to mirror the laptop to the TV.

[Carlos E.R.]

On my laptop, on the same keys as F1..F10, there is a third set of
functions accessible when pressing "Fn" red key. I see mute speaker,
decrease sound volume, increase ditto, and a few more. One of them makes
the display setup menu appear.

Are you saying you don't have those keys, or that you did not try them?


The default action when you plug the hdmi cable of each display can be
configured and written.

Otherwise, report a bug.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

[Ulick Magee]

On 27/12/2021 22:44, bad sector wrote:
>
> a familiar line from "Cecilia", not a week goes by without
> something getting totally fubarred

Yes, you do seem to encounter an unfortunate number of bizarre problems...

There is a key on your laptop to switch between internal screen,
external screen, mirroring and extend desktop. On my Dell it's Fn-F8.
Press it repeatedly until you get the result you want (until the next
bizarre problem)


U

[bad sector]

On 12/30/21 22:21, Ulick Magee wrote:
> On 27/12/2021 22:44, bad sector wrote:
>>
>> a familiar line from "Cecilia", not a week goes by without
>> something getting totally fubarred
>
> Yes, you do seem to encounter an unfortunate number of bizarre
> problems...

What would life be without them? They must be
part of the million reasons why I would not have
changed places with anyone in the past, wouldn't
in the present, and hope to continue likewise in to
my unknown future :-)

> There is a key on your laptop to switch between internal screen,
> external screen, mirroring and extend desktop. On my Dell it's
> Fn-F8. Press it repeatedly until you get the result you want (until
> the next bizarre problem)

Cute, may I suggest that I tried all the Fn Fn keys
and more than once? A non-existant problem with
3 other distros OR with at least one previous
version of (Leap I think).

Enjoy...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5uei2AFEaQ

[Carlos E.R.]

Well, those keys work for me.

As said before, just report in bugzilla that your keys do not work.

>
> Enjoy...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5uei2AFEaQ
>
>


--
Cheers, Carlos.

[bad sector]

The last time I had tried the TV stunt was probably three
to four months earlier and if it had involved any level of
fuddling/duddling I would surely have forgotten it long since.
This time it was in very un-ideal circumstances (screaming
rugrats, noise, and a bit of holiday spirits) so it was a make or
break affair with just a few minutes at its disposal. The next
event, should there be one, will probably be two-three months
or more down the road and will again be a make or break
affair.

The short of the long being that if you manage to see the bus
to reality try not to miss jumping on it before it's too late :-)

I postulate that most users want the laptop 'just mirrored' to
the TV when they connect the two with an HDMI cable so that
any other default would be developper suicide. But do have
a very happy new-year, I hope we will be free of this virus by
then, and when I make the HDMI connection again maybe
around Easter I will remember the only permissible contextual
magic keys requiring 3 fingers because if necessary I will just
reboot to another OS that does deal in the correct defaults :-))

Cheers!

[Carlos E.R.]

You have to prepare in advance, and make sure the keys work, and if not,
find out how to call up the functions that the keys should call. Just
manually.

The keys will not work by magic. Report the bug.

The default action of 'just mirrored' can be changed so that it is no
more the default action.

--
Cheers, Carlos.