# Do custom modelines work?



## Sotai (Sep 1, 2014)

I'm trying to set some custom modelines in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and having no success.

I tried setting them in the Monitor section, then in Modelines, to no avail.

Is there a way to do this correctly or do they simply not work?


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## wblock@ (Sep 1, 2014)

They probably still work, but should not be necessary unless the hardware is broken in some way.  X has been pretty good at getting the list of modes from the monitor for many years.


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## Sotai (Sep 22, 2014)

They're not necessary for a regular monitor function, but I want them for another purpose. They don't seem to work the xorg.conf way. 

If someone knows something about it, please let me know.


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## Juanitou (Sep 22, 2014)

I’m a newbie, so don’t trust my advice. I’ve never used ModeLine but Display subsections in the Screen section, as:

```
SubSection "Display"
	Viewport 0 0
	Depth 24
	Modes "1366x768"
EndSubSection
```
Note that this is for a low value wide-screen monitor.

Later, when updating my computer to NEW_XORG, I realized that, as @wblock says, X does it well by itself and not need to use a custom xorg.conf. Nevertheless, when I upgraded the video card from a ATI Radeon to a Nvidia one I had a hard time convincing X to use this mode and had to play with the nvidia driver options, but that’s another history…


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## Sotai (Sep 23, 2014)

Modeline must be used when it's for a non-standard resolution, such as what I'm going for.


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