[PLUG] trying to understand the interplay between video cards and 3 monitors in linux

[Andrew Jackman]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Andrew Jackman <kd7nyq at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 6, 2009 at 7:29 PM, Victor Soich <vsoich at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Anyone who has gone through this "hassle" of trying to get 3 monitors
>> to work in ubuntu linux, please steer me clear of "bumps in the road".
>>
>
> In terms of behavior, new video cards (both ATI and nVidia) have
> special driver options that allow you to treat two cards as one (like
> mega TwinView).  It allows you to use accelerated applications across
> all displays.  I don't know anything about that, though -- I can't
> afford those cards.
>
> Otherwise, there are basically two modes, Xinerama and normal.  In
> Xinerama mode, the window manager understands all the monitors to be
> one big desktop, but video acceleration generally doesn't work.  In
> normal mode, each screen (TwinView laws apply) is seen as a single X
> Screen (word choice?) and can't leave it.  If I remember right, you
> can get full video acceleration on each screen without tweaking.
> Xinerama and normal modes both allow the mouse to travel across all
> the screens freely, but keyboard focus will follow the mouse from
> screen to screen in normal mode.

If you give me a week or two, I'll send you my xorg.conf.  I'm
currently getting out of school and I'll be switching back to Linux.
Our Microsoft supported university insisted on forcing us into .NET
development tools without warning and I never got the chance to make a
careful backup. :(

-- 
Andrew Jackman
kd7nyq at gmail.com

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