Hi
I have KDE4 in openSUSE 11.3 on a laptop. And I have this 23" monitor that I can connect to the lappy’s VGA socket. So when I’m not travelling I can switch from the lappy monitor to the large monitor.
But there are occasions when I want to see 8 or 10 live, dynamic graphs simultaneously.
Is there software that will allow me to position the video output across two monitors , horizontally?
I’ve seen this running in windows but so far not in Linux.
Thanks
swerdna
So, are you saying that you can only have one monitor working at a time on your Laptop and in switching between them and you can’t get twinview to work? So I can get this to work on a Laptop and a desktop. The desktop is using an nVidia driver (openSUSE 11.3 and KDE 4.5), which works a little different than yours and the laptop is running openSUSE 11.2 with KDE 4.5 loaded. So, I don’t have the exact same setup that you have in either case, so it is hard to know what is not working for you.
Thank You,
I am using the default KDE4 on OpenSUSE 11.3 on a laptop which has its inbuilt screen and I can also attach a sccond screen to the laptop’s VGA socket.
I use the configurator located at Menu → Configure Desktop → Computer administration → Display → Size and Orientation. There I see settings for the two screens. One presents there as “VGA-0 (connected)”. The other presents as “LVDS (connected)”. That configurator allows me to have LVDS working and VGA-0 off, or vice versa, or to have both working. They show the same picture, the same desktop, clones of each other.
I don’t want them to show the same picture, i.e. clones of each other I don’t want.
I want them to show a panorama that stretches across one and into the other, horizontally.
There is another configurator: I go to Menu → Configure Desktop → Computer administration → Display → Multiple Monitors. There I am given the message “This module is only for configuring systems with a single desktop spread across multiple monitors. You do not appear to have this configuration”. I believe that this is the configurator that I need to get working, but I’m not sure, and I don’t know how. That’s why I asked the original question “Is there software that will allow me to position the video output across two monitors , horizontally?”. Or some other method?
Does that all explain my situation better to you?
Hello Swerdna
I read the readme for my nvidia card (downloaded it) is in html
Has all the ins and outs for 2 monitors in every way you can think off
link ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/256.44/
Succes
In the readme its chapter 13 Configuring TwinView
TwinView is a mode of operation where two display devices (digital flat panels, CRTs, and TVs) can display the contents of a single X screen in any arbitrary configuration. This method of multiple monitor use has several distinct advantages over other techniques (such as Xinerama):
A single X screen is used. The NVIDIA driver conceals all information about multiple display devices from the X server; as far as X is concerned, there is only one screen.
Both display devices share one frame buffer. Thus, all the functionality present on a single display (e.g., accelerated OpenGL) is available with TwinView.
No additional overhead is needed to emulate having a single desktop.
If you are interested in using each display device as a separate X screen, see Chapter 15, Configuring Multiple X Screens on One Card.
and then what to edit in your xorg.conf
Thank you very much susegebr, I have an ATI card, but will give the Nvidia a read just for education. I should look on the ATI website for a similar software/addon for ATI I suppose.
Yes, have a look at the the proprietary configuration tools (if using fglrx driver).
aticonfig --help
amdcccle
OK swerdna, I broke out my work laptop and connected an external monitor (HP 18.5" located above the laptop). I have an external USB hard drive which has openSUSE 11.2 64 bit and KDE 4.4.3 loaded on it. When the laptop comes up by default, both monitors show the same thing or are in clone mode. The Laptop is a Dell E6400 and video is Intel Mobile 4 Chipset Integrated Graphics.
I then go to menu / Personnel Settings / Computer Administration / Display / Size & Orientation. I see that my VGA monitor (shown at the top) is set for an Absolute Position of 0,0 while my Built-in monitor (shown just below the VGA), called LVDS, has a position of “Clone Of”. I then set the LVDS monitor as being “Below” then Apply and now the two pictures are not the same. My main desktop is still on the Laptop monitor while the VGA monitor above just shows my background picture. I can move any Application Window between the two monitors and even have a split view of a Window or it can be wholly on one monitor or the other.
In the nVidia speak, this is called Twinview, but this verbage does not show up in KDE any were. Once I stop using the position “clone of” setting, the KDE Multiple Monitors option comes alive and allows other things to be setup for how the mouse and other things work in different Monitors. I can do the same things with the nVidia-Settings program, but none of the settings are the same as when using a Laptop and KDE to produce the same affects, so I have limited ways to produce this with all versions of openSUSE.
Thank You,
You are correct, once the “clone” setting is turned off, the multiple aspect comes alive, I just did not notice. Now I can have eight real-time dynamic charts on the large screen, sitting notionally to the right and the static stuff on the laptop screen, sitting notionally to the left.
Thank you for the solution.
And thanks to the others for the extra advice.