Dual Monitors

[seppalta]

Is there a way to set-up dual monitors as an extended desk top (not cloned) in Mint 10 LXDE?

[richyrich]

you might not get any suggestions, . until you tell us what graphics card and drivers you are using, what monitor(s), and how they are hooked up . . just for starters . .

[seppalta]

you might not get any suggestions, . until you tell us what graphics card and drivers you are using, what monitor(s), and how they are hooked up . . just for starters . .

I have 6 monitors and several computers, and was hoping there was a general adjustment that would cover multiple combinations. In Mint 11 Katya, system/preferences/Monitors solves the problem. Nothing like this available for LXDE?

[seppalta]

I found a solution to easily using a variety of monitor pairs as an extended desktop. The main tool is ArandR, which can be installed from Synaptics and should appear in Preferences. For any combination of display pairs, ArandR can control placement, orientations and resolutions. Once an arrangement for a monitor pair has been settled, you can save it in .screenlayout (a hidden folder in your home folder) by default by clicking the save button in ArandR. Before saving take care to set-up the geometry of any horizontal panels (taskbars), so that they become part of the template. For a bottom panel, align the bottoms of the displays; for a top panel, align the tops. Otherwise, the horizontal placement and geometry in general can be achieved in the usual way, right click an open spot on the panel and choose Preferences/Geometry.

Clicking (opening) the .screenlayout file instantly sets the monitor pair to the settings in the file until the next boot. To make the procedure a bit easier and quicker, i used the Main Menu Editor (lxmed) to put the template for each monitor pair on the Main Menu like an application, and then put it on the lower panel in the usual way. Thus, one click after boot-up and my desktop is properly set to whatever monitor pair I'm using for that session. I suppose there is a way to associate a file in .screenlayout with the start-up menu so that a monitor setting is achieved automatically at boot-up. Can somebody give me some ideas there?

[seppalta]

See (16) in "Tuning LXDE" in http://douwil7.100webspace.net/linux/mint.html.

[perpipon]

yessssssssssssssssssssssssssssss and thank you so much!!!!

we still don't know the brand of your 6 monitors, and pc's and all these useless crap unicorns but we've got an easy, really easy solution to this problem (wich is not finally as we just needed an interface to set our monitors!! )!

and yes Seppalta didn't receive any suggestions because he didn't bring the "starters" but he wanted the same solution than me: install a package and just set his monitors (the tv in my case). So thanks to you Seppalta, you must know that I never come on forums because of this starters thing, but as a new user of Mint LXDE I didn't know where to start my search and you came first (lucky day!). So it just took me less time to set my monitors than to register* to thank you

nerds are killing Linux and the open source so let's just be geeks all together

*2 questions, a catcha and a confirmation mail waow this is unbelievable but there is probably some good reasons to this

PS: it means too that when I searched for a package in synaptic without knowing the exact name of the soft, ArandR didn't pop out (and still it may not be the best...)

[AdamFirst]

I have an Nvidia graphics card and two monitors configured as one desktop. Twinview, is the name, I think.

Is this what you're talking about?

[maylow]

try this: http://willem.engen.nl/projects/disper/

use whatever method you like to set up some desired display configuration (e.g. set up 2 external displays with extended desktop; i used the nvidia admin panel to achieve this). then use disper to export the configuration settings:

$ disper --export > external_dual_display.metamode

set up another display configuration (e.g. only the laptop panel) and again, export it with disper

$ disper --export > laptop_panel.metamode

then you can recall display configurations:

$ disper --import < external_dual_display.metamode
$ disper --import < laptop_panel.metamode

you can assign global keyboard shortcuts to both commands, e.g. Meta-F1 and Meta-F2
you can also recall the dual display command from Startup Applications; if no external displays are found on boot, it will silently fail

=================================================
for reference, here is what i'm using for my notebook (*.metamode files are exported by disper):

$ cat /home/dual_display.metamode
backend: nvidia
associated displays: CRT-0, DFP-0, DFP-1
metamode: CRT-0: 1280x1024 @1280x1024 +1280+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select @1280x1024 +0+0
scaling: default, default, stretched
xinerama info order: DFP-1, CRT-0, DFP-0

$ cat /home/single_desktop_display.metamode
backend: nvidia
associated displays: DFP-1
metamode: DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select @1280x1024 +0+0
scaling: stretched
xinerama info order: DFP-1

$ cat /home/single_display.metamode
backend: nvidia
associated displays: DFP-0
metamode: DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select @1366x768 +0+0
scaling: stretched
xinerama info order: DFP-0

$ cat /home/dual_display
/usr/bin/disper -i < /home/dual_display.metamode

$ cat /home/single_desktop_display
/usr/bin/disper -i < /home/single_desktop_display.metamode

$ cat /home/single_display
/usr/bin/disper -i < /home/single_display.metamode