QNIX 27inch 1440p Monitor Errors with Linux/Ubuntu

Intro:

I've been toying with Linux VMs on my macbook for a while now. There's are many properties of Linux that I love and so I decided to (finally!) install Ubuntu 16.04 on a partition of my ssd so that I may start using it as daily OS. I've played with Mint and Debian, but frankly, I'm not familiar enough with Linux as a whole or the subtleties of each distro to make a meaningful choice. I just chose Ubuntu because it's the most widely used.

The Problem:

My problem is the following: My QNIX 1440p monitor has been working great on mac os, but doesn't work on Ubuntu 16.04. The monitor has only a single a dual-dvi port and so I'm connecting it via a HDMI-DVI cable. The monitor is indeed recognized by the OS, as in it appears in the display manager, but if I attempt to configure it I'll be greeted by a lengthy and intimidating error.

I've been trying to solve this myself but I'm a pretty big novice at the Linux environment and community, so I've finally decided to ask around for some pointers.

My (poor) Attempts at a Solution:

Here's what I've found so far:

This blog post https://jerel.co/blog/2013/10/korean-qnix-ips-monitor-and-apple-displays-working-on-ubuntu-linux appears to describe my problem identically. This guy seems to have gotten the same error in the Display manager as I have. The problem is that when I enter
xrandr --newmode "2560x1440_45.00" 227.75 2560 2720 2992 3424 1440 1443 1448 1480 -hsync +vsync
into terminal I am greeted with the error
xrandr: Output HDMI2 is not disconnected but has no modes
Once again, I am too much of a noob to know how to proceed. I tried searching around but I didn't quite know what to look for.

Another source I found was the blog post: http://blog.patshead.com/2013/09/linux-and-the-qnix-qx2710-monitor.html. I wasn't able to use this information since I didn't understand the solution (What's a modeline? What's the Xorg file and how does it work? Where does the Xorg file go? etc...).

I'm sorry for the enormous post... I thank anyone in advance who was brave enough to read it and thank anyone who is willing to help!

I would suggest you make sure your mod line is correct because he said " (don't copy my xrandr lines below as the modeline probably won't be right for your monitor. Use the value from your cvt command.)"

When you enter the cvt command into your terminal
cvt 2560 1440 45
or
cvt 2560 1440 60
It looks like the third line down is the Modline it says Modeline and the begining of the string.

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I did indeed make sure to get my own mod line, trying both
cvt 2560 1440 45
and
cvt 2560 1440 60

and yet it still gave me the above problems. Thanks for the tip, though!

What is your system specs?

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The machine I'm trying to get this to work on is a 2013 macbook pro 13inch (late-2013) i5, 8gb ram, 256gb ssd: https://support.apple.com/kb/sp691?locale=en_US

Interestingly, I didn't have these monitor issues when using Linux (debian/ubuntu) through virtualbox, or Win10 in a separate partition.

I noticed that the laptop supports different Hz rates for different resolutions.
HDMI video output
Support for 1080p resolution at up to 60Hz
Support for 3840-by-2160 resolution at 30Hz
Support for 4096-by-2160 resolution at 24Hz
Do you by any chance know the supported Hz rate for 1440p on this laptop.

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I don't know any official numbers. However, the monitor works fine (at 60hz) on mac os and win10. I would imagine that means the machine supports 1440p 60hz?

Can you poste what you got when you entered the
cvt 2560 1440 60
command

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I'm currently running some simulations on mac os so I won't be able to boot into ubuntu for a little bit (maybe an hour or two?). I'll post it as soon as I can get into it.

Thanks a ton! I really do appreciate your help

No problem just post the info when you get to it.

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Entering
david@david-ubuntu:~$ cvt 2560 1440 60

I get
2560x1440 59.96 Hz (CVT 3.69M9) hsync: 89.52 kHz; pclk: 312.25 MHz
Modeline "2560x1440_60.00" 312.25 2560 2752 3024 3488 1440 1443 1448 1493 -hsync +vsync

Similarly, for
david@david-ubuntu:~$ cvt 2560 1440 45

I get
2560x1440 44.94 Hz (CVT) hsync: 66.52 kHz; pclk: 227.75 MHz
Modeline "2560x1440_45.00" 227.75 2560 2720 2992 3424 1440 1443 1448 1480 -hsync +vsync

Then when you enter this command
xrandr --newmode "2560x1440_60.00" 312.25 2560 2752 3024 3488 1440 1443 1448 1493 -hsync +vsync

you get his error
xrandr: Output HDMI2 is not disconnected but has no modes
Now you will need to add the mode line to the monitor
so type
xrandr --addmode HDMI2 2560x1440_60.00

then type
xrandr --output HDMI2 --mode 2560x1440_60.00

Then tell me what that comes back as

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After entering the newmode commands I do indeed get the error that you describe.

Entering
xrandr --addmode HDMI2 2560x1440_60.00
yields the same error:
xrandr: Output HDMI2 is not disconnected but has no modes

and entering
xrandr --output HDMI2 --mode 2560x1440_60.00
actually makes the laptop display (but not the external monitor) turn on and off again, but with no other effect other than outputting
xrandr: Configure crtc 1 failed

im gonna test this tomorrow on my macbook air 13 inch 2013 because i cant run my 3340x1440 display from ubuntu on my laptop aswell. but im going mDP-HDMI.

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Let me know if you can get it to work!

Just to wrap this one up, I finally got this to work. Entering the following into terminal solved this problem for me:
xrandr --newmode "2560x1440" 241.50 2560 2600 2632 2720 1440 1443 1448 1481 -hs$
xrandr --addmode HDMI2 2560x1440

Note that the --newmode commands are not the outputs I get my from cvt 2560 1440. This solution was inspired by the xrandr page on the Archlinux wiki.

Thanks for the help!

Now to figure out how to get these commands to apply on startup...

edit: I also changed my kernel to 4.4.8, that may have helped too

To make changes apply on startup you want to edit your xorg file it should be under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

Thanks! I'll try that. I've currently got an inelegant solution. I changed the .bashrc file to run a script on log-in. However, for some reason it only runs when terminal starts. So, I added terminal to startup applications. This isn't so bad considering I essentially always want a terminal session anyway.

I'm a little frustrated because I've literally tried all the methods described in

and none of them have worked besides the .bashrc solution I mentioned.

(surprise!) A new problem has emerged. The default scaling on my external monitor is far too large. The laptop's display is scaled fine under a resolution of 2560x1600 but for some reason mysterious to me the external monitor (placed above the laptop) is not scaled correctly. Windows, texts, icons, etc. all appear about 50% too large (for my eyes) on the external monitor despite appearing at a comfortable size below on the laptop display.

I've tried toying around with xrandr to solve this. In particular, after some googling I tried
xrandr --output HDMI2 --mode 2560x1440 --scale 1.5x1.5 --above eDPI1

This scales the everything correctly, but also duplicates the bottom display into the top monitor's space. Below is a screenshot since it's difficult for me to accurately describe:
Imgur

I would accept the giant blank space to the right (I can place windows in this region and use it as real estate) and chalk up it's blank-ness as just because xrandr didn't want to scale the background. However, note that the top part of the bottom display is being duplicated into the top monitor.

You can also seek some xrandr inputs I've tried.

Thanks again

Here's my newest xrandr output

david@david-ubuntu:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 3040, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected primary 2560x1600+0+1440 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 286mm x 179mm
2560x1600 59.97*+
2048x1536 60.00
1920x1440 60.00
1856x1392 60.01
1792x1344 60.01
1920x1200 60.00 59.95
1920x1080 59.93
1600x1200 60.00
1680x1050 60.00 59.95 59.88
1600x1024 60.17
1400x1050 59.98
1280x1024 60.02
1440x900 59.89
1400x900 60.00
1280x960 60.00
1360x768 59.80 59.96
1280x800 60.00
1152x864 60.00
1024x768 60.00
800x600 60.32 56.25
640x480 59.94
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI2 connected 2560x1440+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 597mm x 336mm panning 2560x1440+0+0
2560x1440 59.95*+ 59.95*
VIRTUAL1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)