Knoppix versus Overscan: Knoppix loses
I just now created a USB stick with Knoppix 7.4.2 on it and tried
booting that up on my Home Theater PC (HTPC). The monitor for
the HTPC is a Panasonic TC-P50X60 plasma TV.
Unfortunately, this TV overscans by a minumum of 2.5%, as verified
by the publically available AVCHD-2d DVD (Basic Settings, Section 5 -
Sharpness and Overscan).
I've tried every setting available on this TV, and it just refuses
to do anything other than a minimum 2.5% overscan... a fact which
annoys me greatly (but I can't complain too much, because I got
the TV new a few months ago for a bargain basement price). All
four sides of the displayed image 2.5% overscan, even when the TV
is set in a way to minimize the overscan problem.
Anyway, the problem is that the main toolbar for Knoppix is so low
on the screen that, with the overscan, that main toolbar is almost
entirely invisible. It is displayed off the bottom of the screen.
(I was lucky that Knoppix responds properly to the HTPC's power
button, otherwise I would not even have been able to perform a
clean shutdown of Knoppix, because I was unable to accurately
mouse over any of the icons in the bottom tool bar, i.e. in order
to get to the normal controls, including the shutdown. Obviously,
it is difficult and/or impossible to accurately mouse over any icons
which are not even visible on the screen!)
It would be Nice if someday a future version of Knoppix implemented
some solution for this rather unfortunate problem. I can easily imagine
at least a couple of different possible solutions, but I really should
leave that to the developer(s).
Optimally however, I think it would be Nice if, for example, right
clicking anywhere on the backgound splash screen would bring up some
option which would allow the user to make some adjustment to X that
would compensate for the unfortunate (and in this case, unavoidable)
monitor overscan.
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