[aklug] Re: Dual monitors

From: Christopher Howard <choward@indicium.us>
Date: Mon Apr 13 2009 - 21:51:46 AKDT

On Sun, 12 Apr 2009, Arthur Corliss wrote:

> 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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>

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the help with setting up the
dual monitors. Everything was fairly easy to set up using nvidia-settings.
I used separate X screens, with one screen on absolute positioning and
the other relative. It works great!

I tried Xinerama, but it seemed like I had too many problems with it. For
some reason I would lose my 3D acceleration (or things slowed down so much
it seemed like a lost it, not sure if there is a difference). I couldn't
get window geometries to work correctly either. Maybe Xfce just doesn't
integrate Xinerama well enough? Or maybe it is all the (what did they call
it?) dead space? One monitor is max 1024x760 and the other is 1280x1024.

Anyway, 3D games and everything work fine using the separate X screens.

-- 
Christopher Howard
http://indicium.us
http://theologia.indicium.us
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Received on Mon Apr 13 21:51:57 2009

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