Re: Using 2nd monitor with Stretch and MATE desktop
On Tue, 09 May 2017, Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 05/09/2017 11:57 AM, Felix Miata wrote:
> I'm not afraid of the command line ;/
...
> counselor. With the standard aptitude tests I scored so low on spatial
> relationships that I could not be found in the statistical mud when compared
...
> an extra verbal _aptitude_ test. Again compared to engineering students I
> was in statistical mud. This time I scored too high to be "normal". It was
Well, extremely high verbal aptitude does not always mean extremely high
reading/writing aptitude, but it most often does, so maybe you would be
better off skipping the GUI?
I had a step-by-step large email written that took half an hour to
write, but something in my custom 4.4 kernel is highly alergic to
playing with xrandr and crashed the box hard while I was trying to test
the commands. Then it took one full hour to undo the damage.
Therefore, I will make into a barebones email. It has just a few key
points for you to look into and see if it looks like it could help you,
as apparently the gnome/kde GUIs to setup multi-monitor were not of much
help.
first: get to know the xrandr command. And its manpage.
xrandr is the utility that does everything behind the scenes, to the
point that kde actually builds a xrandr line and adds it to a config
file somewhere when you use its GUI. Gnome likely does something to the
same effect.
Just calling "xrandr" with no options will output the current state.
Useful information there will be the name of your "outputs", and their
geometry specification (more on this later).
Play with xrandr using its "simple mode", like this:
1st try:
xrandr --output <one of the outputs> --same-as <a different output> --auto
** now move the mouse to all edges: very left, very right, up, down. If
it disappears, move it back in the opposite direction.
The command will "clone" one view port/output over the other, showing
the same area of the screen/canvas. What it really did was to place the
two view ports at the same point of the screen, so they show the same
thing.
(screen: the video memory area where things happen. output/view port:
something that shows a section of the screen, when connected to display
hardware).
Then, play with changing "--same-as" to:
--right-of
--left-of
--above
--below
e.g.:
xrandr --output <port where your left monitor is attached>
--left-of <port where your right monitor is attached> --auto
(all in one line).
At each step, play with the mouse like I said. That ought to get you up
to speed.
After each step, run "xrandr" without options, and look at the geometry
of each output (the thing that looks like 1280x1024+1280+0, or
1280x1024+0+0, etc). It means:
<SIZE_X>x<SIZE_Y>+<POSITION_TOP_LEFT_CORNER_X>+<POSITION_TOP_LEFT_CORNER_Y>
relative to the top-left corner of the screen.
xrandr can do a lot more, such as rotating the viewport (useful if your
monitor has a pivot base that allows these piece of crap widescreen
displays to work as a long vertical page -- great for writing text and
code), etc.
Good luck...
--
Henrique Holschuh
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