I had a lot of problems getting my Linux box to use my S-Video connection as it's primary and only display adapter. First, it would POST (black and white only) then, when X started, it would just cut out signal entirely. I'm still not entirely sure why this is, but I have come up with a solution anyway. First, one should note that if a VGA cable is plugged in, the system will mirror output through post, but will immediately cut out the S-Video once X starts. To get around this, we need to unplug the VGA cable, and work strictly off the S-Video. Not to worry once the X server cuts video feed to S-Video, as a terminal console does not use the X display drivers. To switch to a console, simply hold CTRL and ALT, and use a Function key (F1-F12.) F7 is typically reserved for the X display, so I like to use F2. Once you're in a console, display should pop back up on your TV (horray!). Then, we need to kill X. Depending on what distro you're using, and what window manager you're using, the commands vary. On Ubuntu, the command would be:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop

Or on Kubuntu:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/kdm stop

Once your X session has ended, you will need to install your proprietary drivers. I can not speak for ATI drivers, as I'm more used to an NVidia based solution. To install the NVidia 3d drivers, use the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx-new

Or, if you're using an older Geforce,

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx

If you are not sure which driver you should use, please consult the appendix. If your card falls at the bottom of the list, under "Legacy", you will need the nvidia-glx package. All other cards should use the nvidia-glx-new package.

Now that we have our shiny, new drivers installed, we're going to need to edit our xorg.conf file. This file is found in the /etc/X11 directory. To edit it, use the following command:

$ sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf

The config file will open in the nano text editor, where we will use arrow keys and page up and page down keys to navigate. Navigate down to the section entitled "Device". From there, we will make a few changes.

Section "Device"
 Identifier           "Generic Video Card"
 Driver               "nvidia"
 Busid                "PCI:1:0:0"
 Option               "AddARGBVisuals"    "True"
 Option               "AddARGBGLXVisuals"    "True"
 Option               "NoLogo"    "True"
 Option               "TVStandard"    "NTSC-M"
 Option               "TVOutFormat"    "SVIDEO"

What we've added here are the Option lines to change the TV standard to NTSC-M (American broadcast standard, and what your TV will recognize) and changed the TV out format to S-Video, to tell the video card what we're outputting with. Adding the ["NoLogo" "True"] line disables the full screen NVidia splash screen. If you like the screen, simply change the value to "False". The other line that we need to look at is the "Driver" line. By default, "nv" will be loaded as the driver for NVidia based cards. That is because it is a free, open source driver provided in the repositories. It does not allow 3d acceleration, or many of the other advanced features. Since we installed the new video driver, we should change "nv" to "nvidia". press CTRL+O to save the file, and hit enter to accept the default file name. press CTRL+X to exit the program.

Our final step is restart the X server. There are a couple of ways you could do this. You could, of course, restart your computer using the command:

$ sudo shutdown -r now

Or, you could call the init script for the proper runlevel (it's OK if you don't know what this means... but if you would like to know, go ahead and check out the Wikipedia article on them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runlevel). The command to invoke the runlevel is:

$ init 5

Finally, you could simply start the X server manually, without invoking a runlevel. The downside to this is that when you try to exit your window manager (KDE, Gnome, XFCE, whatever), it will not give you the options to shut down or restart, but simply log off - at which point you will be returned to a command line. The command to invoke that would be:

For Ubuntu:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start

Or Kubuntu:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/kdm start

That's it! You're all set! If you have any suggestions on anything here, or any comments, questions, or if you would like to offer your experiences in this setup, or an ATI setup, please drop me a line.

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