[11.3] Dual monitor setting not sticky

English Multimedia
#1

openSUSE 11.3

Display hardware: Radeon R350 (Radeon 9800 Pro) with a DVI and VGA monitor attached.

On system bootup, both screens are identical. Going into System Settings > General > Display > Size & Orientation, I extend the desktop over the two screens, by changing the position of the DVI screen from “Clone of” VGA-0 to “Left of” VGA-0. I apply the change, and everything works fine.

But when I reboot the system, the display settings revert to the DVI being a clone of the VGA, and I have to go through the above procedure again to extend the desktop.

So, two questions:

  1. How do I make the desktop extension sticky?

  2. When I click on “Multiple Monitors”, it says “This module is only for configuring systems with a single desktop spread across multiple monitors. You do not appear to have this configuration.” But I have set up exactly this configuration, so why doesn’t this option work?

–
Ian

#2

Hi Ian

You can achieve the desired dual monitor configuration with a simple xrandr command, then make it persistent by adding it to a script executed after login. See if these threads help:

Dual monitor setup in 11.3

Trying to set up xorg.conf for a laptop on docking station + external screen

Won’t save display settings

#3

Aha, it’s all coming back to me now. I remember having to add an xandr command in openSUSE 11.0.

Now fixed in 11.3, by adding this line to the end of /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc.common:

  xrandr --auto --output DVI-0 --mode 1280x1024 --left-of VGA-0

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction deano_ferrari.

The question now arises: why wasn’t this fixed a long time ago? :wink:

–
Ian

#4

It’s a desktop environment issue really, and AFAIU making desktop changes has been made persistent with KDE4.6 onwards. (Hopefully, this applies for dual monitor setups as well).