Re: good dual head x tutorial
On Thursday 16 February 2006 10:20 pm, Gnu-Raiz wrote:
> On Thursday 16 February 2006 06:43 pm,
> debian-user-digest-request@lists.debian.org wrote:
> From:
> Nelson Castillo <nelsoneci@gmail.com>
>
> On 2/16/06, Matt Zagrabelny <mzagrabe@d.umn.edu> wrote:
> >> hello,
> >>
> >> i am looking for a good tutorial on how to setup a dual monitor.
> >>ive
> >> done enough googling and havent seen anything comprehensive. i
> >>have
> >> found some but they seem to be mostly mandrake(iva) or fedora
> >>core or
> >>some other distro centric. any suggestions for a distro agnostic
> >>tutorial or a debian specific.
> >
> >I set up two monitors in my home PC and I collected a few
> >links. They're not Debian Specific, but they helped me.
> >
> >http://del.icio.us/arhuaco/multihead
> >
> >Regards.
> >
> >--
> >http://arhuaco.org/
>
> Those guides are pretty good, but one of the simplest ways to get
> dual head monitors is to buy a video card that supports it. Such as
> the Matrox, or some Nvidia cards.
be very careful of Matrox. i have been using dual head for some years now on a
laptop with nvidia card that supports dual heads. works great. then, when i
got an SMP box with no AGP or a suitable PCI-Express slot, i thought i'd give
matrox cards a shot since i remember them being great for 2-D especially with
multiple heads. about $250 later, i can't get dual head to work properly to
save my soul. the configuration works, but it locks up randomly. after
several days of googling, i read comments from matrox people about how they
expect their users to buy commercial drivers that actually work from third
parties. and if buying such a driver is out of reach for linux users, tough;
since they have *many* price "unsensitive" customers in the DOD etc. so they
really didn't care about providing working drivers for the linux market.
the problem, it seems, is that the matrox drivers don't like SMP. so it may
not be a problem for most people.
i, for one, will be staying at a safe distance from matrox.
anoop.
>
> It can be as simple as turning on twinview, and telling xorg, or
> xfree what head is what. The Nvidia readme is very good in that
> regard, I am using an old gf2 dual monitor card right now. This
> card is over 4 years old and still going strong. The original fan
> failed, was replaced, and it works great. It's a good feeling to
> get some old hardware working for a few years more.
>
> It also depends on your needs, some people have different needs,
> others just want to get into dual head goodness. If you haven't
> bought the hardware yet I would consider what exactly you plan to
> do. Some want each head as a separate x display, while others want
> an extended desktop. It also depends on the window manager you use,
> some window managers have problems with xinerama. So it really can
> be an art to get things just right.
>
> I would not worry about a specific distro howto, as what it comes
> down to is the detection of the hardware, and your xorg, or xfree
> conf file. Most likely you will have to edit it by hand, to add
> the proper sections and monitors. Again this all depends on what
> level, and job you intend to do. This will also depend on the
> hardware you use, as some hardware require their special additions,
> and options in the conf file.
>
> Gnu-Raiz
--
anoop
aaryal@foresightint.com
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