4 ms·

"First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, ...Xorg, " I stopped there http://xkcd.com/963/ h

"First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, ...Xorg, " I stopped there http://xkcd.com/963/ http://xkcd.com/963/

loungin 15y ago
All too true. Both my work and home computers run Arch. At work, dual monitors on a single ati video card with xinerama was a HUGE pain in the ass. I ended up just running without xinerama and the Driver/Screen/Monitor/Server sections, let X choose its defaults, and then use xrandr to get the monitors working proper, although they still don't share the same background image, I can live with it. In Archs defense though, setting up xorg is simply installing the packages which is trivially easy with pacman. I love it to death.
chimeracoder 15y ago
Technically true, but misleading. I've installed Arch on four machines of various hardware, and this is actually the easiest part of the installation process. You have to select a driver from a comprehensive list of which drivers work for which cards, and you don't have to make any (non-trivial) changes to xorg.conf, unless you want to set up multiple monitors. (And even then, I was able to avoid that for a long time by using XFCE, which apparently doesn't mind when xorg.conf settings are unspecified/improperly specified). Yes, everything has to be set up manually on an Arch system, but that's a feature - you know where everything on your system is, and you know that there's nothing you didn't add yourself. And with the wiki, setup may take some time (again, by design), but the process is incredibly straightforward.
- tmhedberg 15y ago
  I have an Arch laptop that I frequently use with a second monitor, and I've never had to tweak my xorg.conf. The now-ubiquitous XRandR extension for X largely obviates the need for xorg.conf completely. These days, it tends to "just work".
lgeek 15y ago
I constantly switch between using two external monitors through my docking station, using my TV through HDMI, or just the internal display. I don't even have an xorg.conf file. The defaults are perfectly fine and RandR does the job of changing outputs while X is running. I have a T420 with Intel graphics.

"First of all, nothing works out of the box. You will have to manually set up the driver for your video card, ...Xorg, " I stopped there http://xkcd.com/963/ http://xkcd.com/963/

loungin 15y ago

All too true. Both my work and home computers run Arch. At work, dual monitors on a single ati video card with xinerama was a HUGE pain in the ass. I ended up just running without xinerama and the Driver/Screen/Monitor/Server sections, let X choose its defaults, and then use xrandr to get the monitors working proper, although they still don't share the same background image, I can live with it. In Archs defense though, setting up xorg is simply installing the packages which is trivially easy with pacman. I love it to death.

chimeracoder 15y ago

Technically true, but misleading. I've installed Arch on four machines of various hardware, and this is actually the easiest part of the installation process. You have to select a driver from a comprehensive list of which drivers work for which cards, and you don't have to make any (non-trivial) changes to xorg.conf, unless you want to set up multiple monitors. (And even then, I was able to avoid that for a long time by using XFCE, which apparently doesn't mind when xorg.conf settings are unspecified/improperly specified). Yes, everything has to be set up manually on an Arch system, but that's a feature - you know where everything on your system is, and you know that there's nothing you didn't add yourself. And with the wiki, setup may take some time (again, by design), but the process is incredibly straightforward.

tmhedberg 15y ago
I have an Arch laptop that I frequently use with a second monitor, and I've never had to tweak my xorg.conf. The now-ubiquitous XRandR extension for X largely obviates the need for xorg.conf completely. These days, it tends to "just work".

lgeek 15y ago

I constantly switch between using two external monitors through my docking station, using my TV through HDMI, or just the internal display. I don't even have an xorg.conf file. The defaults are perfectly fine and RandR does the job of changing outputs while X is running. I have a T420 with Intel graphics.