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So yesterday our team got a new toy. A big ass 4k screen to display some graphs on. Took a while to assemble the stand, hang the TV on that stand, but we got there.

So our site admin gets us a new HDMI cable. Coleague told us his lappy supports huge screens as he used to plug his home TV in his work lappy while WFHing. He grabs that HDMI, plugs one end into the screen, another - into his lappy and

.. nothing...
Windows does not recognize any new devices connected. The screen does not show any signs of any changes. Oh well..

Site IT admin installs all the updates, all the new drivers, upgrades BIOS and gives another try.

Nothing.

So naturally the cable is to blame. The port is working for him at home, so it's sure not port's fault. Also he uses his 2-monitor setup at work, so the port is 100% working!

I'm curious. What if..... While they are busy looking for another cable, I take that first one, plug it into my Linux (pretty much stock LinuxMint installation w/ X) lappy,

3.. 2.. 1..

and my desktop is now on the big ass 4k fat screen.

Folks. Enough bitching about Linux being picky about the hardware and Windows being more user friendly, having PnP and so. I'm not talking about esoteric devices. I'm talking about BAU devices that most of home users are using. A monitor, a printer, a TV screen, a scanner, wireless/usb speaker/mouse/keyboard/etc...
Linux just works. Face it

P.S. today they are still trying to make his lappy work with that TV screen. No luck yet.

Comments
  • 6
    lol good for you
    did you try to press on the Keyboard
    windows key + p ?
  • 6
    @heyheni I? Nopes. Why would I? 😁 it works for me.

    And they were trying all sorts of things. Enabling/disabling nvidia, discovering new monitors in display props, juggling power settings, blah, blah. I lost a track of all of their moves 😁
  • 1
    Pretty neat. Though won't you break your neck looking at it?
  • 4
    Is it at 4k60? Is it possible that windows tried to serve 4k60 over an outdated HDMI spec (1.4 or less) and that Linux worked because it set a different displaymode such as 4k30, 2.5k60? Or maybe even that your system has a 2.0 port?

    Nevermind, you should probably not let them know. This toy is yours now.
  • 1
    @Mvzes Even if Windows attempts to serve 4k60 over outdated HDMI spec, wouldn't it at least show that it detected a display in display settings?
  • 1
    @netikras Not sure to be honest. Would you dare try it out?
  • 2
    hi fucking 5
    i experience the same behavior, it's awesome
  • 7
    There is no operating system with better and more comprehensive hardware support than Linux. Period.
  • 1
    Don't you use a DVI cable for 4K? HMDI I think doesn't give full resolution... Or at least that's what happened with my desktop...
  • 1
    @billgates

    4K works just fine over HDMI.
  • 0
    @bahua I remember when I plugged mine in with 4K, the graphics were fuzzy... And monitor would let me set the resolution to 4K. Using the DVI input though would without any problems... Except some app screens become tiny...
  • 1
    you should use a new 2.1 hdmi cable
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI/...
  • 1
    @heyheni maybe that's why 4k gets so spastic on my tv.
    no idea how I missed this info, but huge thanks
  • 1
    Interesting.. I think somehow I've nuked my rpi4 with that screen. I managed to make it work once. Then rebooted and since then I cannot get any video output out of my rpi. Tried 3 different screens [2k] which were working with my rpi just fine before. Tried a few other fresh sd card images. Nothing.

    At least the os is coming up - raspbian is writing to syslog.

    Interesting...
  • 1
    If that's a XPS 9570 then the max supported displays is three, laptop display included, as can be found in the spec of the intel chip.
  • 0
    @tlystad24 nope.. It's some thinkpad
  • 1
    Eventually they did it. DP->hdmi adapder did the trick for windows. Not 4k ofc, but at least some output was there :)

    oh and the rpi was not broken. After reflashing sd card it started working again. There's just this annoying thing - it requires 3A psu to run well. I only have 2.4A charger and the rpi randomly freezes video output for good when 4k is used. Only reboot brings video back then. And dmesg confirms undervoltage
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