Hi,
I would like to use two monitors with my desktop, so connected them the other day and it worked straight away, which is good but… The monitor configuration app always want the primary monitor to be on the left hand side, thus it always extend my desktop right. Can I do anything to extend my desktop to the left instead of to the right so I can have background application on the screen to the left?
Help much appreciated!
Tom.
On 06/28/2011 05:36 PM, tomant wrote:
> so I can have background application on the screen to the left?
move the screen presently on the right so that it sits to the left of
the one presently on the left…
I would like to use two monitors with my desktop, so connected them the other day and it worked straight away, which is good but… The monitor configuration app always want the primary monitor to be on the left hand side, thus it always extend my desktop right. Can I do anything to extend my desktop to the left instead of to the right so I can have background application on the screen to the left?
Help much appreciated!
You really need to post details about which openSUSE version you’re using and desktop environment. (It can make a difference to the answer). If using KDE4, then navigate to System Settings>>Display and Monitor, set the primary output (to the desired monitor), arrange the monitors how you would like, then ‘Save as Default’. The next time you log back in, your preferred dual display arrangement should be respected.
If you right-click on the yellow and black monitor icon on the panel and go to Configure Display settings you can drag on screen to the left or to the right adjust the screen extension. If there is no Icon on the Panel go to Control Centre on the main menu and click monitors under hardware.
Sorry about that, I’m using gnome on 11.4. It seems like in KDE you can specify primary monitor, but this isn’t possible in gnome? When I click on the Configure Display setting on the black and yellow monitor icon, when I move the monitors about, it always makes the one on the left hand side the primary monitor.
Sorry about that, I’m using gnome on 11.4. It seems like in KDE you can specify primary monitor, but this isn’t possible in gnome? When I click on the Configure Display setting on the black and yellow monitor icon, when I move the monitors about, it always makes the one on the left hand side the primary monitor.
I’m not familiar with Gnome, however you can use the ‘xrandr’ command to set the primary monitor (as well as a host of other display configurations). (If you’re using a proprietary driver for ATI or NVIDIA hardware, then they have their own utilities for this).
Type
xrandr
to get your display names. (They’re driver specific names that are assigned).
Then, for example, if one is called VGA1 and you wanted it to be the primary display, you could do
xrandr --output VGA1 --primary
This could be added to a startup script.
Type
xrandr -h
for more configuration options.
Edit: If you get stuck, or the xrandr commands don’t work for your graphics hardware, please post your graphics card hardware details and driver in use
/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard
xrandr gives
xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
VGA-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 476mm x 268mm
1920x1080 60.0*+
1680x1050 60.0
1280x1024 75.0 70.0 60.0
1440x900 75.0 59.9
1152x864 75.0
1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0
832x624 74.6
800x600 75.0 60.3 56.2
640x480 72.8 75.0 60.0
and /sbin/hwinfo gives
/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard
bash: /sbin/hwinfo: No such file or directory
Not sure what to do to find what driver is controlling the monitor?
Sorry, mymistake. The hwinfo command lives in /usr/sbin/
/usr/sbin/hwinfo --gfxcard
However your xrandr results show only one monitor (VGA-0) connected. You need to run it with both monitors connected.
If you wanted your VGA-connected monitor to be the primary display, you would then execute
xrandr --output VGA-0 --primary
Then you can use xrandr (or the graphical monitor config tool) to set the second display to the right.
Don’t know what graphics card and driver you’re using but if it’s an nvidia card and you’ve installed the nvidia driver then Nvidia X Server Settings allows you to set the position of any of your screens as ‘left of’ ‘right of’ etc
This means ‘left of your other screen’ if you select left of
Don’t know about other make cards and their drivers/software but if my delivery turns up on schedule tomorrow I’ll be looking at setting up the exact same thing on a nice shiny new Ati card that’s going in the nice shiny new machine I’ve just built myself