I’m intending to connect a flat panel TV as my second monitor soon.
If anyone has been there before, if you could cast a quick glance over the following and tell me if I’ve overlooked something important, I’d appreciate it.
Here goes …
I’ll use the nvidia server settings tool as root to change my xorg.conf, which I’ve backed up. I’ll set things up as two separate X screens.
Does the KDM screen appear on one or both screens? I think: Yes
Does KDE present two desktops? I think: Yes
I can have a different panel on each screen? I think: Yes.
I can have a different wallpaper on each screen? I think: Yes
Dialog boxes won’t straddle screens? I think: Yes
My mouse and keyboard focus can move between screens? I think: Yes
I won’t use Xinerama, I’ll position windows by passing a -display argument or setting the DISPLAY variable.
Finally, if I switch off the second monitor, does it mess up the first monitor’s display? I hope : No.
i have hooked up to my flat screen simply using sax2, just using a cloned multi-head and it worked fine, except for some reason i had to log out first, then log back in. my laptop screen went blank, and used the laptop, but everything appeared on the tv. sorry i can’t answer many questions. also, i used a monitor cable, not s-video although it should be the same.
Same problem here. For a half year I’ve succesfully used a dual monitor setup (laptop + external 20" screen) on openSUSE 10.3, set up with nvidia-settings, as separate screens.
First screen is 1280x800, second 1680x1050. After similiar setup in openSUSE 11, first screen has virtual resolution of 1680x1050 (but you can’t scroll it) and windows in the second screen are drawn without decorations (KDE 3.5.9), making working with two monitors completely unusable.
Did anyone find a succesfull setup of dual monitors under openSUSE 11 with nVidia card?
That’s useful to know, because it suggests it’s not something silly I’ve done.
My primary screen is working fine, although I had to widen my KDE panel to 100% - I had it centered at 80% of screen width, but it was shifted to the right.
My primary screen is 1280x1024, and it’s no longer a pane within 1680x1050, as I can confirm by moving the mouse up against the three edges that don’t share an edge with the secondary screen.
Did you remember to run nvidia-setting as root (with kdesu)? If you don’t it seems to work, but it doesn’t write your xorg.conf, only .nvidia-settings-rc.
Yes, I’ve run nvidia-settings with kdesu. But there is another quirk: It seems that effects of two monitors at once depends on type of X-server. I’ve got different effects after changing in /etc/sysconfig DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER from Xgl to Xorg. Enough to say that this was a limited success - the first screen was in native resolution (1280x800), but on the second there was no KDE desktop or panel, only X-mouse pointer visible.
>
> Yes, I’ve run nvidia-settings with kdesu. But there is another quirk:
> It seems that effects of two monitors at once depends on type of
> X-server. I’ve got different effects after changing in /etc/sysconfig
> DISPLAYMANAGER_XSERVER from Xgl to Xorg. Enough to say that this was a
> limited success - the first screen was in native resolution
> (1280x800), but on the second there was no KDE desktop or panel, only
> X-mouse pointer visible.
>
>
Hi
In your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file do you have a metamode section
detailing the modes? eg (note this is SLED), have a look here at mine,
which I also used with 11.0 RC1 for a short time.
I also have a 1280x800 laptop with a 1680x1050 Monitor I have resorted to using the 1680x1050 resolution for both as it is cloned since my Graphics card won’t do one combined screen over 2 monitors. I was wondering whether there was a way to force the windows to only use the top 1280x800 pixels so that all my windows are constrained to my laptop screen but full screen videos fill the entire screen.
In KDE, you can set, for each application, window size and position on the screen. This is a good workaround for the weirdness such as some of us are experiencing with dual monitors.
I’m now looking to find out why KDE on the primary screen is sometimes wrong about the display resolution.
@sanguinus -Try putting a very thin transparent KDE panel on any edges of the screen where you wish to constrain the windows. It’s an ugly, ugly hack I admit.
On the primary screen, to constrain maximised windows, it’s sufficient to put tiny panels (24x24 pixels) at top left and top right in addition to the usual panel at the bottom. Windows then stay on screen.
On the secondary screen. I’m running fvwm2 instead of KDE, with no more than the bare minimum of controls. I can invoke gwenview from fvwm to show photos (or even play movies) using the mouse.
