Arch Linux

i'm sorry but this sounds like you need to change resolution in those games to match your wide monitor, like 1280x800

Sorry, but that's not correct. This isn't an issue with the games themselves. On all computers I have except for this one, if you tell a game to stretch, it will stretch to the edges of the screen on all sides. On this machine, whether you tell the games to stretch or not, they won't. It's an issue with the driver.

In addition, Chromium-bsu refuses to allow resolutions above 1024x768.

What driver are you using?

xf86-video-intel

Does your screen stretch to fullscreen mode when you use something like the vesa driver (disable KMS when you try). If so, this could be a hardware feature to make sure you always have the correct aspect ratio on screen. My 40" television does the same when I send 1280x1024 to it instead of 1080p (SiS740 on Windows XP).

How do I disable KMS and enable vesa? I'll be more than happy to test this, but when I set up the computer I didn't do anything specific with drivers other than Xorg -configure.

Also, if there is a "feature" to keep the aspect ratio, I don't want it. If I go into the options and tell a game to stretch, it should do it. It does on any other machine. For example, in ZSNES if I choose "640x480" and choose the option to stretch, on any other machine it will stretch to the edges. On my laptop, it will just keep the resolution at 640x480 and fill the rest of the screen with black borders.

I'm pretty sure when I put my Windows 7 hard drive in it, this worked fine. I can test again to be sure.

Testing with your windows harddrive in it should be fine also.

I'm not sure if X will start with current intel drivers and w/o KMS. Remove the intel drivers and check the wiki on how to disable KMS: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel#KMS_.28Kernel_Mode_Setting.29

Here are the results of my testing today.

Windows 7:
* ZSNES did scale (unlike Arch) but it kept the aspect ratio by default

* ZSNES was maximized vertically (the game fit the top and bottom edges) but it doesn't scale horizontally (it keeps aspect ratio)

* When I went into the Intel graphics options, and set it from "keep aspect ratio" (the default) to "scale", ZSNES scaled on all sides of the screen.

Linux:
* ZSNES won't scale at all, whatsoever. In Windows 7 it at least scaled it up and down, but Linux won't even do that!

* Frozen Bubble and Chromium BSU both have the exact same problem, they won't scale at all. Like everything else, the game window is centered with black all around, it doesn't touch any of the four edges of the screen.


So basically, Windows 7 has the same problem, but it's worse in Arch. In Windows, it will scale the application until the program meets the top and bottom edges of the screen. Also, in Windows if I set the graphics options to "scale", it will work perfectly and scale to each edge of the screen. Arch Linux, on the other hand, won't even scale to the top and bottom edges at all. As far as I know there isn't an option to scale in Linux but if there is, please let me know.

I hope I'm making sense.

I also thought I would mention this. I tried the following from the wiki to set the scaling mode:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel#Setting_scaling_mode

Both commands in that section kill and restart X every time, and it doesn't change anything. The fact that X crashes while changing scaling mode worries me, though in the previous version of the intel driver (it was just updated today) those commands weren't recognized at all.

Either report upstream or request closure and try solving this with the help of other people in the forum. The bug tracker is not a discussion forum. Theres the bbs for that.

No update from original reporter in 6 months. Possible candidate for closing.

Yes, please close. It appears to be working now, an update must have fixed it. Sorry, I forgot about this report.