Twinview, Dual Monitor, Dual Screen

Hopefully this will be of some help to others. I have fought with dual screen mode for years. The site that helped me the most was here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_Monitors. This solution is basically a manual setup of the xorg.conf file. All controls are straight forward X11 stuff.

I am using a dual output agp nvidia card and the nvidia drivers, manually installed. I do not use either YaST or 1-click. Go to the drivers download page of nvidia.com and use the search tool to find your card and the appropriate driver. Download it and remember where it is. Then manually install through a text mode reboot (I use failsafe). The command is: sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-version you downloaded.run

Accept all of the questions including letting it update your xorg.conf. Then reboot.

Do NOT use Sax to configure!! I didn't find a problem with the Nvidia setup tool, but it didn't help either.

I would recommend using the /etc/X11/xorg.conf that the nvidia driver created for your starting point. I would also strongly recommend backing up that file as well. Make the changes you require, save this new file as xorg.conf and reboot. If you run into troubles, just come back into Failsafe and copy that backup as xorg.conf and reboot. You will be back and running with your single screen.

Below is what I am running successfully. This forum has helped me over the years, hopefully this information will be help to someone else also:

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
****Identifier**** "Multihead layout"
****Screen******** "Screen[0]"
#****Screen******** "Screen[1]" LeftOf "Screen[0]"
****InputDevice****"Mouse[0]" "CorePointer"
****InputDevice****"Keyboard[0]" "CoreKeyboard"
#****Option********"Xinerama" "off"
#****Option************"Clone" "off"
EndSection

Section "Files"
****InputDevices******"/dev/gpmdata"
****InputDevices******"/dev/input/mice"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/misc:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/local"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/Type1"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/URW"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/Speedo"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/PEX"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/cyrillic"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/latin2/misc:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/latin2/75dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/latin2/100dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/latin2/Type1"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/latin7/75dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/baekmuk:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/japanese:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/kwintv"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/truetype"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/uni:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/CID"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/ucs/misc:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/ucs/75dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/ucs/100dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/hellas/misc:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/hellas/75dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/hellas/100dpi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/hellas/Type1"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/misc/sgi:unscaled"
****FontPath********"/usr/share/fonts/xtest"
****FontPath********"/opt/kde3/share/fonts"
EndSection

Section "Module"
****Load********** "dbe"
****Load********** "type1"
****Load********** "freetype"
****Load********** "extmod"
****Load********** "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
****Option******** "AllowMouseOpenFail" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
****Identifier****"Keyboard[0]"
****Driver********"kbd"
****Option********"Protocol" "Standard"
****Option********"XkbLayout" "us"****
****Option********"XkbModel" "microsoftpro"
****Option********"XkbRules" "xfree86"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
****Identifier******"Mouse[0]"
****Driver**********"mouse"
****Option************"Protocol" "IMPS/2"
****Option************"Device" "/dev/input/mice"
****Option************"ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
****Option************"Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Device"
****Identifier**** "Device[0]"
****Driver******** "nvidia"
****VendorName**** "NVidia"
****BoardName******"GeForce FX 5200 (0x0322)"
****BusID********"AGP:01:00:0"
****Screen********0
****Option********"TwinView"
****Option********"MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768; 1024x768; 800x600,800x600; 800x600"
****Option********"TwinViewOrientation"****"LeftOf"
****Option********"SecondMonitorHorzSync"****"UseEdidFreqs"
****Option********"SecondMonitorVertRefresh"****"UseEdidFreqs"
EndSection

Section "Device"
****Identifier**** "Device[1]"
****Driver******** "nvidia"
****VendorName**** "NVidia"
****BoardName******"GeForce FX 5200 (0x0322)"
****BusID********"AGP:01:00:0"
****Screen********1
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
****Identifier**** "Monitor[0]"
****VendorName**** "NEC"
****ModelName******"FE700"
****UseModes****** "Modes[0]"
****DisplaySize**** 345****259
****HorizSync****** 31.0 - 70.0
****VertRefresh**** 55.0 - 120.0
****Option******** "CalcAlgorithm" "XServerPool"
****Option******** "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
****Identifier** ****"Monitor[1]"
****VendorName** ****"Optiquest"
****ModelName********"Q71"
** ****UseModes**** ****"Modes[1]"
********DisplaySize** **** 345****259
****HorizSync**** **** 30.0 - 115.0
****VertRefresh** **** 50.0 - 160.0
****Option******** ****"DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
****Identifier****"Modes[0]"
EndSection

Section "Modes"
****Identifier****"Modes[1]"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
****Identifier**** "Screen[0]"
****Device******** "Device[0]"
****Monitor********"Monitor[0]"
****DefaultDepth****16
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 15
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 16
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 24
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 8
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
****Identifier**** "Screen[1]"
****Device******** "Device[1]"
****Monitor********"Monitor[1]"
****DefaultDepth****16
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 15
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 16
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 24
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
****SubSection**** "Display"
********Depth****** 8
********Modes******"1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1280x768" "1024x768" "1280x600" "1024x600" "800x600" "768x576" "640x480"
****EndSubSection
EndSection