Hello!
I have some interesting problems with my dual monitor setup on Linux Mint 16 KDE 64-bit. I have a Samsung Series 7 laptop with Intel Core i7 3630QM 2.40 GHz, AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB, 2x4 GB DDR3.
I have 2 OS - Linux Mint 16 KDE 64-bit and WIndows 7 64-bit, side by side on a 250GB SSD. I have an external monitor LG 24'' E2441 connected via HDMI on the right side of the laptop itself and it is set as primary monitor in display settings (extended desktop).
Problems:
1. Some flash players fullscreen opens on laptop screen, but it should be always on my external monitor since it is set as primary. For example youtube.com and vimeo.com fullscreen always opens on the external screen, but all the trailers on imdb.com open the fullscreen on the laptop screen. I could give more examples, but I recon there is no need for that.
I have tried to change the graphics card driver in the driver manager, I have three options there (xserver-xorg-video-ati{recommended}, fglrx, fglrx-updates) and I tried them all without any luck, however the fglrx works better than the recommended one (I had some black fields on my screen from time to time when I open something in fullscreen)
2. Anything I open (file manager, terminal, software manager, etc.) it chooses randomly on which screen to appear, most of the time it is the screen on which i had last activity or should i say which one is focused at the moment (mouse click on the screen makes it focused) but not always. Is there any way to force to open everything on my external monitor?
3. When I watch a video exactly after 15 minutes my both screens go dark and my external monitor says HDMI Power Saving Mode, this thing acts randomly as well. It is not about Power Settings because I have set there to dim the screens after 10 min of inactivity and I also tried to turn that option off completely without any luck.
None of these problems occur on Windows 7.
I am new to Linux, I tried Ubuntu 12.04 and Crunchbang and now I think I am going to stick with Linux Mint KDE.
On Ubuntu I had similar problems and with Crunchbang it was a nightmare in regards dual monitor setup. With these two distros I tried different things to solve the problems but I couldn't beat it. Since now I have found a desktop environment that I like I want to configure it correctly and since with Ubuntu and Crunchbang I didn't have any luck, I decided to write this post, because it seems without help I am not going to make it. I would appreciate any advice and tips on how to solve these problems.
Thanks in advance!
dual monitor problem
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juniormafia
dual monitor problem
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
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iowabeakster
Re: dual monitor problem
Most importantly, I think you might want to re-post your issue in a different section (hardware support maybe).
Anyway, I probably won't be of much help. I never got my wife's ATI card working with proprietary drivers in her Asus laptop at all (and I'm not new to linux, at all). You are ahead of me in that department! Although I don't think anybody has managed to get a working ATI proprietary driver for her particular model, and probably never will, I've been looking for 2 years now. So multi-monitor never has been possible with it.
On one of my desktops, I have some quirks that sound a lot the issues like you are having with multi-monitor, but not all the same problems (for example: no monitor shut-downs, except what I expect for power savings). And it is a completely different hardware set-up (a very old desktop with Nvidia Graphics). My issues have to do with something that I did very intentionally. I created two separate Xservers, one for each monitor. I did this for the work that I do, and the way I do it. And what you describe sounds somewhat like this might be what your issue is. Fox example, If I have Chrome running (or nautilus, or whatever) on one monitor, and I try to open a second instance of it on the other monitor, it will open the second instance of it on the monitor that it was already running on. And sometimes something else is running under the hood, that'll cause something else to open a window on the "wrong" monitor. I work around it because I need to have separate Xservers for other reasons.
On my "new" desktop, I ran dual monitors for some time on a single Xserver (again Nvidia graphics though). And had nothing at all like you describe. That worked perfectly, without any strangeness. So, maybe check the your driver settings and see if you have separate xservers running for your monitors. The ATI driver-settings program is called Catalyst Control Center (i think).
Good luck, and try your post again in Hardware (or maybe even the newbie section) to get the most eyeballs. Post your xorg.conf file so the real experts can see exactly the configuration.
Anyway, I probably won't be of much help. I never got my wife's ATI card working with proprietary drivers in her Asus laptop at all (and I'm not new to linux, at all). You are ahead of me in that department! Although I don't think anybody has managed to get a working ATI proprietary driver for her particular model, and probably never will, I've been looking for 2 years now. So multi-monitor never has been possible with it.
On one of my desktops, I have some quirks that sound a lot the issues like you are having with multi-monitor, but not all the same problems (for example: no monitor shut-downs, except what I expect for power savings). And it is a completely different hardware set-up (a very old desktop with Nvidia Graphics). My issues have to do with something that I did very intentionally. I created two separate Xservers, one for each monitor. I did this for the work that I do, and the way I do it. And what you describe sounds somewhat like this might be what your issue is. Fox example, If I have Chrome running (or nautilus, or whatever) on one monitor, and I try to open a second instance of it on the other monitor, it will open the second instance of it on the monitor that it was already running on. And sometimes something else is running under the hood, that'll cause something else to open a window on the "wrong" monitor. I work around it because I need to have separate Xservers for other reasons.
On my "new" desktop, I ran dual monitors for some time on a single Xserver (again Nvidia graphics though). And had nothing at all like you describe. That worked perfectly, without any strangeness. So, maybe check the your driver settings and see if you have separate xservers running for your monitors. The ATI driver-settings program is called Catalyst Control Center (i think).
Good luck, and try your post again in Hardware (or maybe even the newbie section) to get the most eyeballs. Post your xorg.conf file so the real experts can see exactly the configuration.
Re: dual monitor problem
JM,
Sorry that I'm not going to be able to offer you an answer right off, but a few questions occur to me that you might like to consider from an experimental point of view...
==Question 1==
With respect to Issue #1, there may be several things worth looking at. The first would be the observation that the web sites you quote may all offer a wide range of different media file formats. I wonder if there is any consistency between the way that a give file type (Flash, MPEG-4, etc) behaves? You *might* be able to ascertain the file type on YouTube, since it gives you an option of display resolution.
Next would be to wonder what happens when you try and play such a file natively. I appreciate this is something you may not wish to do, but there are (for example) Firefox plug-ins that provide a YouTube download capability. Have you tried downloading a couple of short sample files and then trying to run them natively?
Reading your comments, I wonder if your browser is switching between several different codec players, and as it does so each one has a "default" playback setting... I appreciate you write "some flash players", but of course not everything on the web is flash these days...
==Question 2==
Does this help?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1255 ... s-opened-f
or maybe this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1255 ... s-opened-f
==Queston 3==
I've seen this myself, and it does occur when watching a video (say on VLC). Usually a key-press or a nudge of the mouse can wake things up. I have a suspicion that there may be multiple timers at work here... For example, in KDE System Settings -> Hardware -> Power Management I see a range of options covering things like "Dim Display after 5 min" and "Screen Energy Saving Switch off after 10 min" . I had a quick look in my nVidia Control panel, but don't see anything specific there (you don't say, but do you use a specific video driver with your Radeon?)
Unfortunately, because I have an nVidia GTX card, I won't see the same configuration that you do, but in the nVidia config for Linux there is a reasonably easy setup that lets me specify which monitor is the primary, and which sits to the left and right on my desk.
The symptoms you describe strongly suggest to me that you have multiple timers running on your system that all want to darken the screen, and the one that is triggering first remains to be discovered... I wish I could suggest where to look, but I strongly suggest this is the place to look. The sorts of things I'd be tempted to read up on would include your basic windowing settings. This is not likely to be the answer, but it might prove enlightening:-
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-dis ... blank.html
Hope this helps!
C
Sorry that I'm not going to be able to offer you an answer right off, but a few questions occur to me that you might like to consider from an experimental point of view...
==Question 1==
With respect to Issue #1, there may be several things worth looking at. The first would be the observation that the web sites you quote may all offer a wide range of different media file formats. I wonder if there is any consistency between the way that a give file type (Flash, MPEG-4, etc) behaves? You *might* be able to ascertain the file type on YouTube, since it gives you an option of display resolution.
Next would be to wonder what happens when you try and play such a file natively. I appreciate this is something you may not wish to do, but there are (for example) Firefox plug-ins that provide a YouTube download capability. Have you tried downloading a couple of short sample files and then trying to run them natively?
Reading your comments, I wonder if your browser is switching between several different codec players, and as it does so each one has a "default" playback setting... I appreciate you write "some flash players", but of course not everything on the web is flash these days...
==Question 2==
Does this help?
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1255 ... s-opened-f
or maybe this
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1255 ... s-opened-f
==Queston 3==
I've seen this myself, and it does occur when watching a video (say on VLC). Usually a key-press or a nudge of the mouse can wake things up. I have a suspicion that there may be multiple timers at work here... For example, in KDE System Settings -> Hardware -> Power Management I see a range of options covering things like "Dim Display after 5 min" and "Screen Energy Saving Switch off after 10 min" . I had a quick look in my nVidia Control panel, but don't see anything specific there (you don't say, but do you use a specific video driver with your Radeon?)
Unfortunately, because I have an nVidia GTX card, I won't see the same configuration that you do, but in the nVidia config for Linux there is a reasonably easy setup that lets me specify which monitor is the primary, and which sits to the left and right on my desk.
The symptoms you describe strongly suggest to me that you have multiple timers running on your system that all want to darken the screen, and the one that is triggering first remains to be discovered... I wish I could suggest where to look, but I strongly suggest this is the place to look. The sorts of things I'd be tempted to read up on would include your basic windowing settings. This is not likely to be the answer, but it might prove enlightening:-
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-dis ... blank.html
Hope this helps!
C