Knowledge Base (Posts about graphics)

Package for Devuan: paint

bgstack15 — Tue, 03 Feb 2026 14:29:00 GMT

I wanted to make it easy to install the old mspaint.exe program. So I built a package. You can find it in my OBS slice.

Screenshot of Paint running in Wine on Devuan GNU+Linux

Prevent constant WinG display test in Windows 3.1

bgstack15 — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 13:52:00 GMT

Some games that I run in my DOSBox Windows 3.1 environment always show a "Optimal display performance test" screen.

Screenshot of Windows 3.1 with a fuzzy graphic with the text Your program is testing for optimal display performance so that it will look its best on your system

I learned it was the WinG application after searching the Internet for that exact expression.

Due to how I install my dosbox environment, it is owned by root at path /usr/share/win31games. But I run dosbox as my own user, and even though all the directories are mode o+w, this utility keeps displaying every time I want to run the affected game.

I learned how to fix it. I copied it to ~/win31games and ran it there, and then diffed the WIN.INI file.

diff -aur /usr/share/win31games/WINDOWS/WIN.INI /home/bgstack15/win31games/WINDOWS/WIN.INI
--- /usr/share/win31games/WINDOWS/WIN.INI         2026-01-02 15:54:14.162281332 -0500
+++ /home/bgstack15/win31games/WINDOWS/WIN.INI    2026-01-02 11:50:49.716741502 -0500
@@ -178,5 +178,7 @@
 [WinG]^M
 s3trio.drv640x480x8(0,12)v1.70.4.0-504A-1.0.0.37=ECHGEGHGDDHGHCHGDDHGDDFFDDFFDDFFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZDDFGDGFGDDFGDDFG1F^M
+s3trio.drv640x480x8(0,12)v1.70.4.0-565C-1.0.0.37=ECHGECHGECHGECHGDDFFDDFFDDFFDDFFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZDDFGDDFGDDFFDDFG1F^M
+s3trio.drv640x480x8(0,12)v1.70.4.0-5B93-1.0.0.37=ECHGECHGECHGECHGDDFGDDFGDDFFDDFFZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZDDFGDGFFDDFFFFFF1F^M
 ^M
 [drawdib]^M
 s3trio.drv 640x480x8(5)=1,0,0,0^M

So apparently WIN.INI was not writeable. Once I updated it with this new one with the latest dosbox emulated video card serial number, it then would run my game instantly.

Using Minecraft textures in Mineclonia

bgstack15 — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 12:30:00 GMT

For when you want to look as close to Minecraft as possible, you can adapt a texture pack. There's multiple ways to do it. You can read my raw research notes down below. This is the official way I accomplished it to my satisfaction.

Building the texture pack

Adapting Minecraft texture

Download the conversion tool from https://codeberg.org/ostech/craft_to_clonia_textures. I compiled the source but binaries are also provided. Run it once to build a config.json and input directory.

Download the original textures from somewhere. I used https://github.com/Faithful-Pack/Default-Java but the Internet suggests that https://mcversions.net/ is a main place for that too. I placed them in new subdirectory input/, so input/Default-Java.

Here is my config.json.

{
"DefinedInput": false,
"DefinedOutput": true,
"ExportMinetest_Game": false,
"ExportMineclonia": true,
"InputDir": "./input",
"OutputDir": "/home/bgstack15/Downloads/converted4"
}

To use the configured OutputDir, you need to set DefinedOutput=true. Then run it, and place the new directory in ~/.var/app/net.minetest.Minetest/.minetest/textures. I called mine mc01 and customized the texture_pack.conf.

For my own systems, I tarballed it as .

References

Research and alternatives

get source assets from https://github.com/Faithful-Pack/Default-Java and used mineclonia tools/Texture_Converter.py which got almost everything. Made grass and water gray instead of green/blue.
used same source assets, and project https://forum.luanti.org/viewtopic.php?p=443213#p443213

ddccontrol for monitors

bgstack15 — Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:58:53 GMT

The story

I use an Nvidia graphics card on my Devuan Ceres desktop. I also use two monitors, and a kvm switch for one of the monitors. On the other monitor I have a 3-input HDMI input switcher. Some article I read on the Internet suggested that one can use software to interact with the monitors, using the ddc protocol. I think DDC is how my old computers could recognize what was plugged in to my VGA port (and nowadays, VGA, displayport, and unfortunately some HDMI) by name.

On GNU/Linux, that software is ddccontrol. To enable Nvidia to pass through ddc protocol, I had to enable a module parameter. I set value in new file /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-registry.conf which turns on the i2c capabilities of my 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] (rev a1).

options nvidia NVreg_RegistryDwords="RMUseSwI2c=1"

I re-ran update-initramfs to ensure even the initram has this new setting.

sudo update-initramfs -u -k $( uname -r )

After a reboot (just to be sure), in userspace, I can now query the monitor. To learn the input field:

$ ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-4 -d | grep -i input
 Control 0x60: +/5/3 C [Input Source Select (Main)]

My two identical Samsung monitors ended up needing slightly different ddccontrol commands. I suspect this is due to one is connected via HDMI and one via DP.

My monitor-left-hdmi.sh command:

ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-4 -r 0x60 -w '5'

monitor-left-dp.sh:

ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-4 -r 0x60 -w '3'

monitor-right-vga.sh:

ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0x60 -w '1'
ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0xdb -w '4'
ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0xdc -w '6'
ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0xeb -w '253'

monitor-right-hdmi.sh:

ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0xdb -w '253'
ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0xdc -w '260'
ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0xeb -w '9'
ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-2 -r 0x60 -w '5'

I learned all those by evaluating the output of ddccontrol dev:/dev/i2c-4 -d after manually choosing the inputs I cared about.

These monitors didn't have prebuilt profiles in the ddccontrol-db.

Linux: Fluxbox on Nvidia driver: Fonts are huge

bgstack15 — Tue, 06 Sep 2022 12:34:19 GMT

I installed Devuan GNU+Linux on a desktop computer with a Nvidia graphics card. Once I used the nvidia-driver dpkg and rebooted, everything worked correctly. Fluxbox had a problem where its size 8 fonts were gigantic! Investigating revealed that the Nvidia settings utility shows a DPI of 304x305. An Internet search for nvidia fluxbox large font showed a very useful solution from the FreeBSD forum

Inside the generated xorg.conf (which I placed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/hostname.conf), add to the "Monitor" section:

Option         "UseEditDpi" "false"
Option         "DPI" "96 x 96"

Also, I learned that lspci -v will show you what kernel module is in use for a given PCI device. Here is my graphics card with the proprietary Nvidia driver.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd GP107 [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti] Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 30, IOMMU group 1 Memory at f6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M] Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M] I/O ports at e000 [size=128] Expansion ROM at 000c0000 [virtual] [disabled] [size=128K] Capabilities: Kernel driver in use: nvidia Kernel modules: nvidia

References

Internet searches

nvidia fluxbox large font

Weblinks

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/fluxbox-fonts-are-huge.22849/

update 2024-04-13

While you might be tempted to place a file, /etc/X11/Xresources/dpi with contents:

! bgstack15 2023-07-16-1 17:29
Xft.dpi: 96

Which tends to help most of the time, it doesn't fix the "hardware" dpi that this post helps with. See also https://old.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/gsq0ix/nvidia_drivers_ruins_my_resolution_and_dpi/ which indicates to place this in a file, e.g., /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/hostname.conf:

Section "OutputClass"
    Identifier "nvidia dpi settings"
    MatchDriver "nvidia-drm"
    Option "UseEdidDpi" "False"
    Option "DPI" "96 x 96"
EndSection

Fix vlc ui scaling problems

bgstack15 — Thu, 11 Apr 2019 12:51:14 GMT

Vlc disable hidpi scaling

tl;dr

Set the environment variables:

export QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0
export QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=1

The story

I am testing Fluxbox on Devuan on a physical system (instead of just a VM) with two monitors. I discovered that on one monitor, the ui for vlc is scaled way wrong. For my left monitor, the buttons are way larger than they should be. And on the other monitor, the buttons were normal-sized, but the menus and other text widgets were way too small. When I set the environment variables as described above, vlc appears in the correct scaling. At one point, I had some OS or DE installed that showed that my system viewed the left monitor (HDMI-connected) as a 7" screen with 1920x1080 resolution, which is why the scaling on the left side was messed up. Not only did I add those variable exports to my ~/.fluxbox/startup file, I also wrote a wrapper for vlc as /usr/local/bin/vlc

1 2	`#!/bin/sh QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0 QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=1 /usr/bin/vlc`

I was not aware that VLC was a QT program. But, after setting some environment variables,

References

Weblinks

How to Enable hiDPI Scaling? - The VideoLAN Forums

Internet searches

vlc disable hidpi scaling

Extract icons from .exe files

bgstack15 — Tue, 24 Jul 2018 13:17:10 GMT

In this cross-platform world, sometimes you just really need an icon from a .exe binary. Thanks to the StackOverflow community, here is the definitive method to do that. Install icoutils.

dnf install icoutils
# OR
sudo apt-get install icoutils

Use resource 14 (icon groups) to extract the icons.

wrestool -x -t 14 mybinary.exe -o outputdir/

Devuan and Dell D630 graphics issue

bgstack15 — Sat, 26 May 2018 13:03:02 GMT

On one of my Dell D630s running Devuan GNU/Linux, I ran into an interesting issue. It does not occur on my other D630, so there's hope. Originally I actually changed from my i686 installation of Devuan ascii to the x86_64 version, but the problem still persistent. After a few minutes of dedicated searching, I found the answer!

tl;dr

Put on the kernel line:

video=SVIDEO-1:d

Normally in /etc/default/grub:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet video=SVIDEO-1:d"


And then you have to run:


grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Explanation

The symptom of my problem occurs when changing screen resolutions in X11, or switching to or from the X11 display to a different tty. The mouse responds and moves around the (graphical) screens, but nothing else is updated for about 10 seconds. I investigated dmesg, and it shows the very interesting results at the bottom of the post. After shortening the snippet to paste into Internet search engines, I finally found an answer! This bug has something to do with handling the svideo output. Disabling the svideo output (my Dell Latitude D630 does not even have one!) makes the issue go away.

[  168.672218] [drm:drm_atomic_helper_commit_cleanup_done [drm_kms_helper]] *ERROR* [CRTC:29:pipe B] flip_done timed out
[  168.776236] ------------[ cut here ]------------
[  168.776296] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 2274 at /build/linux-6WgLIg/linux-4.9.88/drivers/gpu/drm/drm_irq.c:1254 drm_wait_one_vblank+0x197/0x1a0 [drm]
[  168.776299] vblank wait timed out on crtc 1
[  168.776302] Modules linked in: appletalk ax25 ipx p8023 p8022 psnap llc bnep bluetooth rpcsec_gss_krb5 nfsv4 dns_resolver nfsd auth_rpcgss oid_registry nfs_acl nfs lockd grace fscache sunrpc parport_pc ppdev lp parport iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support b43 bcma snd_hda_codec_idt snd_hda_codec_generic mac80211 snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec cfg80211 coretemp snd_hda_core dell_wmi kvm_intel sparse_keymap dell_rbtn rng_core dell_laptop kvm snd_hwdep yenta_socket snd_pcm dell_smbios rfkill snd_timer snd dcdbas dell_smm_hwmon irqbypass soundcore lpc_ich pcmcia_rsrc i915 mfd_core joydev pcspkr evdev serio_raw drm_kms_helper shpchp battery video wmi button ac drm i2c_algo_bit acpi_cpufreq ext4 crc16 jbd2 crc32c_generic fscrypto ecb glue_helper lrw gf128mul ablk_helper cryptd aes_x86_64 mbcache dm_mod sr_mod cdrom
[  168.776470]  sg sd_mod hid_generic ata_generic usbhid hid psmouse firewire_ohci ata_piix i2c_i801 ssb i2c_smbus mmc_core pcmcia firewire_core crc_itu_t pcmcia_core libata tg3 ptp pps_core libphy scsi_mod thermal ehci_pci uhci_hcd ehci_hcd usbcore usb_common
[  168.776532] CPU: 1 PID: 2274 Comm: Xorg Tainted: G        W       4.9.0-6-amd64 #1 Debian 4.9.88-1+deb9u1
[  168.776535] Hardware name: Dell Inc. Latitude D630                   /0KU184, BIOS A08 02/28/2008
[  168.776540]  0000000000000000 ffffffff9312f774 ffffb93e40b1f980 0000000000000000
[  168.776551]  ffffffff92e78a5e ffff9dc735860000 ffffb93e40b1f9d8 0000000000000000
[  168.776559]  0000000007000df1 ffff9dc77bc8a898 ffff9dc736bf2800 ffffffff92e78adf
[  168.776568] Call Trace:
[  168.776582]  [] ? dump_stack+0x5c/0x78
[  168.776591]  [] ? __warn+0xbe/0xe0
[  168.776597]  [] ? warn_slowpath_fmt+0x5f/0x80
[  168.776604]  [] ? finish_wait+0x3c/0x70
[  168.776642]  [] ? drm_wait_one_vblank+0x197/0x1a0 [drm]
[  168.776648]  [] ? prepare_to_wait_event+0xf0/0xf0
[  168.776733]  [] ? intel_get_load_detect_pipe+0x624/0x640 [i915]
[  168.776799]  [] ? intel_tv_detect+0x15a/0x590 [i915]
[  168.776828]  [] ? drm_helper_probe_single_connector_modes+0x432/0x520 [drm_kms_helper]
[  168.776866]  [] ? drm_mode_object_get_properties+0xd7/0x100 [drm]
[  168.776904]  [] ? drm_mode_getconnector+0x32a/0x360 [drm]
[  168.776938]  [] ? drm_ioctl+0x1ed/0x470 [drm]
[  168.776975]  [] ? drm_mode_connector_property_set_ioctl+0x60/0x60 [drm]
[  168.776984]  [] ? __fpu__restore_sig+0x7b/0x580
[  168.776992]  [] ? do_vfs_ioctl+0xa2/0x620
[  168.776997]  [] ? SyS_ioctl+0x74/0x80
[  168.777004]  [] ? do_syscall_64+0x8d/0xf0
[  168.777011]  [] ? entry_SYSCALL_64_after_swapgs+0x58/0xc6
[  168.777016] ---[ end trace 8f754217765c1d43 ]---
[  168.921006] ------------[ cut here ]------------

References

Weblinks

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=93782

Searches

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=g!+drm_irq.c%3A1254+drm_wait_one_vblank%2B0x197%2F0x1a0&ia=web