[aklug] Re: Dual monitors

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009, Greg Madden wrote:

> On Saturday 11 April 2009, Christopher Howard wrote:
>> Any of you guys using or have used dual monitors on a Linux box with
>> NVIDIA? I was thinking of trying it out with my Debian amd64 machine
>> (with NVIDIA 6 series card) but I'd have to rearrange some furniture so
>> I was hoping to get some input first.
>>
>> What I am particularly interested in: If you run a full-screen app,
>> like a video game, will it contain itself to the main monitor, or will
>> it try to stretch out the resolution? Testimonials on the this or any
>> other related issue would be appreciated.
>
> Okay, i use an Nvidia card: Quadro FX 3000, I use dual monitors with each
> monitor being independent, what plays on one screen stays on one
> screen :-) works great. Vmware does full screen, stays on one screen.

Your X config is going to control this. The nvidia drivers support
something called TwinView, which makes all your displays one logical
display. This means that full screen spans all of them, centered dialogs
are split across screens, etc.

What you want, though, is the Xinerama extension. This allows X to realize
that they are separate displays while aggregating the desktop across them.
Full screen is then confined to a single display, etc. It also allows you
the benefits of Xrandr capabilities, including mirror outputs and so on.

This sounds like what Greg is doing, and what I do myself.

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die
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Received on Sun Apr 12 22:44:11 2009