bramaudi

How I setup my new monitor

Table of contents

My previous monitor was DELL (can't find the series) with 1024x768 resolution, quite smol and hard to use on some software. Since my old monitor experience a degradated display quality because surely it is too old and fortunately today I have a chance to buy a new monitor, I'm looking for cheap monitor that my CPU can achive which is only 60Hz of maximum refresh rate and found LG Monitor 24MR400-B 24'' and long story short the package was arrived, for complete spec you can see at https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-24mr400-b.

Ok so now the first thing I do is migrating the display configuration to my Debian and do some adjustment to make my eyes comfort. At first I try the new display it was not configured yet and it make me experience a motion sickness.

1. xrandr

Firstly my computer won't auto-detect the new display resolution of my new monitor (1920x1080) so to fix that we can create new display variable using this command:

# 60 = refresh rate
cvt 1920 1080 60

And this will give output (I only got 59.96 Hz refresh rate here maybe since I using old VGA cable):

# 1920x1080 59.96 Hz (CVT 2.07M9) hsync: 67.16 kHz; pclk: 173.00 MHz
Modeline "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync

The string after Modeline are one we must copy. And then create new file sudo nvim /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45custom_xrandr-settings and add xrandr config script:

xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA-1 1920x1080_60.00

We are done for xrandr part, let's move on mointor configuration.

2. Monitor settings

Using auto-configured setting are add too high brightness for me so here are my configuration:

3. Linux display settings

After moving from small resolution (720p) to FHD display (1080p) everything scaled down and make it harder too see IMHO, I prefer to make it looks bigger, here are what I changed so far:

  1. Panel height: 48
  2. Font Selection > Font Settings > Text scaling factor: 1.3

PS

Currently I'm using my previous VGA cable as monitor connector and seems it make me only gain 59.96 Hz not full 60 Hz so staring too long at my computer make me feel bit dizzy (perhaps bacause of motion sickness [1]), for now I am waiting for DVI to HDMI cable I bought in online marketplace to be arrived, let's see if this can fix this problem I will update this post later.

UPDATE: Using HDMI cable even make everything much easier and works out of the box, basically unlock the full features it has including resolution auto-detected, more refresh rate option, color correction, unlock volume option, etc. I even delete all my previous xrandr settings. Since the color are bit different I do some adjustment:

  1. Motion sickness occurs due to a difference between actual and expected motion. Symptoms commonly include nausea, vomiting, cold sweat, headache, dizziness, tiredness, loss of appetite, and increased salivation. Complications may rarely include dehydration, electrolyte problems, or a lower esophageal tear. Wikipedia. ↩