Tallscreen Monitor

Do vertically scrolling texts and images look lame on your widescreen monitor? Then rotate it!

Frame buffer or modesetting rotation

Support for framebuffer rotation must be enabled in the kernel (this is not required for rotation using Xorg).

KERNEL Tallscreen related kernel modifications

Device Drivers  --->
    Graphics support  --->
        Console display driver support  --->
            [*] Framebuffer Console Rotation

The fbcon kernel boot option is used to rotate the kernel frame buffer at boot time.

FILE /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/fbcon.txt

fbcon=rotate:<n>
 
       This option changes the orientation angle of the console display. The
       value 'n' accepts the following:
 
             0 - normal orientation (0 degree)
             1 - clockwise orientation (90 degrees)
             2 - upside down orientation (180 degrees)
             3 - counterclockwise orientation (270 degrees)

If you wish to rotate your display to the right and are using GRUB-0, append the option fbcon=rotate:1 to the kernel lines in /boot/grub/grub.cfg

To perform the same rotation with GRUB2, append fbcon=rotate:1 to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX variable in /etc/default/grub and execute the grub-mkconfig command:

root #grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

The screen should be reoriented on the next boot, assuming the kernel has been compiled with rotation support.

Xorg rotation

xrandr (x11-apps/xrandr) can rotate Xorg output at runtime, but the best practice is to rotate the display when Xorg is initialized and before anything is rendered.

First determine the name of you display output by running xrandr while Xorg is active. Look for a line like HDMI1 connected....

Then add a Rotate option to the monitor section of 40-monitor.conf configuration file:

FILE /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-monitor.confTallscreen related Xorg modifications

Section "Monitor"
	# This identifier would be the same as the name
	# of the connector printed by xrander.
	Identifier	"VGA1"
	Option		"Rotate"	"right"

	Option	"PreferredMode"	"1920x1080"
	# A line such as this ^ may be necesary if you
	# are not getting your prefered resolution.
	# These numbers need not be reversed with tallscreen orientation.
EndSection

Xorg should now rotate the screen at X startup.

The author of this article uses tallscreen monitors whenever possible, but also uses a tiling window manager. Results may vary with other desktop environments.