11 ms·

KDE Gains “Magic Monitor” Functionality With New KScreen

60 points by glazemaster 14y ago

ayi 14y ago
what a magic in 2012. i'm impressed. </sarcasm>
- lewisreynolds 14y ago
  Sure it's tardy, but it's also really useful, and it's nice to see Linux continuing to improve, no matter how slowly. This isn't something that looks like magic, it's just something that will make users more productive and less stressed. That's the kind of advance we need more of.
  - kh_hk 14y ago
    >> Sure it's tardy, but it's also really useful, and it's nice to see >> Linux continuing to improve, no matter how slowly. Not to be the nitpicker here, but this is hardly a Linux issue, mostly about implementation in different desktop environments (GNOME, Unity, KDE, ...). Everything is already on sysfs and randr. It's up to environments to adapt these changes. Which is great, because each of them can implement the behavior in the way that makes most sense for their users.
BinaryAcid 14y ago
Exactly why I stopped using Linux ten years ago.
- kh_hk 14y ago
  You stopped using Linux ten years ago because of VGA output handling?
  - pyre 14y ago
    More like: grumble grumble I hate Linux. <anecdote about a poor user experience>. No one at all should ever use Linux for any reason whatsoever!
haakon 14y ago
This is mostly blogspam for this: http://www.afiestas.org/screen-management-got-magic/ http://www.afiestas.org/screen-management-got-magic/ It's easy to be cynical about this, but I for one am very pleased about this development. So sorely needed. Perhaps in a small way it can help slow down the migration from Linux to Mac on the desktop.
- glazemaster 14y ago
  Hardly blogspam, the source you cited is listed clearly as a source at the bottom of the article. It even gives credit to the referrer. "John said Sally got a noew job, how do you feel about that Debrah?", "That's great." said Debrah. "I can't wait to tell Frank!" "Frank, John just told me that Sally got a new job!" It also contains 200 words of original commentary as a lead-in, and the report is less 300 words in total.
- idm 14y ago
  Actually, the OP provided some context that helped. It's been a few years since I used Linux as a desktop - so I had forgotten all the x11 conf horrors. I appreciated the lead-in.
  - haakon 14y ago
    I use Linux on the desktop and I haven't touched an X11 configuration file in many years. I would have to Google for its location if I wanted to even look at it. Stuff just works now - except we don't have intelligent multimonitor support (until now).
    - dice 14y ago
      The GNOME 3 "Displays" app is pretty good. You can toggle mirrored, external screen to the left or right by just dragging, etc. It isn't quite as slick as the one shown in the video, but it's certainly functional and easy to use.
      - haakon 14y ago
lewisreynolds 14y ago
If this works I'll be delighted. I've got an Ubuntu installation with three monitors and two graphics cards and I burnt untold hours of my life getting them all to work. Then an upgrade came along and broke them for good. Of all the things that could be improved[1] on linux this would be my number one preference. Screen real estate is critical for development work and I have practically been driven back to Windows or Mac. [1] A flash player that doesn't tint everything blue would also be welcome.
- prakashk 14y ago
  > [1] A flash player that doesn't tint everything blue would also be welcome. Are you talking about the problem described in this post? http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-blue http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-bl...
- CasimirCelerity 14y ago
  An fyi, the latest nvidia drivers fix the blue man bug. The bug was never on their end but rather adobe's, but the new drivers have a hack since adobe never got around to fixing it.
mistercow 14y ago
This is definitely a step forward but my biggest annoyance with Linux and external monitors is handling CRTs that (apparently) send incomplete EDID information. With literally every CRT monitor I've used with Linux, the highest resolution option I've seen in the default popup is 1024x768, with the maximum refresh rate being the headache-inducing 60 Hz, regardless of the monitor's actual capability. At least more recently I've been able to get xrandr to work so that I can add other resolutions myself, and then I can put them in a script to run on boot, but holy crap is that annoying. Windows and Mac OS X have no problem detecting what these displays support, but X has been dropping the ball on this for years.
w1ntermute 14y ago
I'm not sure why people are always complaining about multi-monitor handling on Linux. It's always worked just fine for me. With an open source graphics driver, there's RandR and various frontends for it. With any proprietary driver, you use their own UI for it.
- jimux2 14y ago
  Setup has always been a very minor annoyance, but as a gamer who uses multiple monitors, Linux has been a simple no-go for me. I proselytize Linux everywhere, but is mostly just a development platform for me, because of this combination. I recently got on the Steam for Linux beta, and it's fantastic. But most games I have to play in windowed mode, and some I just can't play at all, because it spans across my two screens (with very different dimensions and resolutions). Sure, I could disable one monitor, but that's more trouble than it's worth, when I can still take advantage of my 2nd monitor just fine in Windows. In Windows, games only fullscreen on one screen, I can still see my gmail feed just fine on my second monitor. Linux does a lot of things very well, but multiple monitors has always been a bit of a mess when fullscreened apps are involved.
  - ori_b 14y ago
    I've found that's generally a program bug. When the programs try to find the root window, and create an OVERRIDE_REDIRECT window that covers the entire screen, they behave poorly. They should be setting the EWMH fullscreen hint. To be honest, I haven't seen a program in ages that gets this wrong. Do you have any examples?
    - jimux2 14y ago
      I'd have to get home and boot up Linux to try them out, but the ones coming to mind are Darwinia, Trine, and World of Goo. Is there a way that I, as a user, could manually set that fullscreen hint?
      - ori_b 14y ago
        You could set the fullscreen hint yourself. The problem is that setting it on an override redirect window will do nothing, because override redirect exists solely for the purpose of telling the WM "Never touch this window." You would have to figure out how to make it use a regular window. It's unfortunate. The mechanism to allow the WM to handle fullscreening intelligently is there, but it seems that the developers weren't aware of it.
aroman 14y ago
This looks great! I've come to really rely on the "closed clamshell mode" that was shown off last in the video -- Macs have had this for quite a while now. But it's always really great to see some work being done in this field. Kudos to the developers and the sponsors!
eatporktoo 14y ago
I think that "Magic Monitor" oversells this. I expected something much more... magic...
foolano 14y ago
This is great news. I've been using a patch that I made to address this annoying issue in KDE for a year now: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103356/ https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103356/ My patch was more of a hack than anything else but it did its job. I'm happy though that I won't need to patch every new KDE version any longer :)
frozenport 14y ago
aerosnap is a feature I sorely miss on Linux. I have been able to recreate its functionality for a single screen, but I have been unable to make it work correctly for a dual screen setup. It seems that have multiple screens in Linux creates a drawing canvas that is rectangular in shape and it is not clear how to find out the more complicated 2 rectangle shape. I would like to see this issue addressed.

60 points by glazemaster 14y ago

ayi 14y ago

what a magic in 2012. i'm impressed. </sarcasm>

lewisreynolds 14y ago
Sure it's tardy, but it's also really useful, and it's nice to see Linux continuing to improve, no matter how slowly. This isn't something that looks like magic, it's just something that will make users more productive and less stressed. That's the kind of advance we need more of.
- kh_hk 14y ago
  >> Sure it's tardy, but it's also really useful, and it's nice to see >> Linux continuing to improve, no matter how slowly. Not to be the nitpicker here, but this is hardly a Linux issue, mostly about implementation in different desktop environments (GNOME, Unity, KDE, ...). Everything is already on sysfs and randr. It's up to environments to adapt these changes. Which is great, because each of them can implement the behavior in the way that makes most sense for their users.

BinaryAcid 14y ago

Exactly why I stopped using Linux ten years ago.

kh_hk 14y ago
You stopped using Linux ten years ago because of VGA output handling?
- pyre 14y ago
  More like: grumble grumble I hate Linux. <anecdote about a poor user experience>. No one at all should ever use Linux for any reason whatsoever!

haakon 14y ago

This is mostly blogspam for this: http://www.afiestas.org/screen-management-got-magic/ http://www.afiestas.org/screen-management-got-magic/ It's easy to be cynical about this, but I for one am very pleased about this development. So sorely needed. Perhaps in a small way it can help slow down the migration from Linux to Mac on the desktop.

glazemaster 14y ago
Hardly blogspam, the source you cited is listed clearly as a source at the bottom of the article. It even gives credit to the referrer. "John said Sally got a noew job, how do you feel about that Debrah?", "That's great." said Debrah. "I can't wait to tell Frank!" "Frank, John just told me that Sally got a new job!" It also contains 200 words of original commentary as a lead-in, and the report is less 300 words in total.
idm 14y ago
Actually, the OP provided some context that helped. It's been a few years since I used Linux as a desktop - so I had forgotten all the x11 conf horrors. I appreciated the lead-in.
- haakon 14y ago
  I use Linux on the desktop and I haven't touched an X11 configuration file in many years. I would have to Google for its location if I wanted to even look at it. Stuff just works now - except we don't have intelligent multimonitor support (until now).
  - dice 14y ago
    The GNOME 3 "Displays" app is pretty good. You can toggle mirrored, external screen to the left or right by just dragging, etc. It isn't quite as slick as the one shown in the video, but it's certainly functional and easy to use.
    - haakon 14y ago

lewisreynolds 14y ago

If this works I'll be delighted. I've got an Ubuntu installation with three monitors and two graphics cards and I burnt untold hours of my life getting them all to work. Then an upgrade came along and broke them for good. Of all the things that could be improved[1] on linux this would be my number one preference. Screen real estate is critical for development work and I have practically been driven back to Windows or Mac. [1] A flash player that doesn't tint everything blue would also be welcome.

prakashk 14y ago
> [1] A flash player that doesn't tint everything blue would also be welcome. Are you talking about the problem described in this post? http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-blue http://askubuntu.com/questions/117127/flash-video-appears-bl...
CasimirCelerity 14y ago
An fyi, the latest nvidia drivers fix the blue man bug. The bug was never on their end but rather adobe's, but the new drivers have a hack since adobe never got around to fixing it.

mistercow 14y ago

This is definitely a step forward but my biggest annoyance with Linux and external monitors is handling CRTs that (apparently) send incomplete EDID information. With literally every CRT monitor I've used with Linux, the highest resolution option I've seen in the default popup is 1024x768, with the maximum refresh rate being the headache-inducing 60 Hz, regardless of the monitor's actual capability. At least more recently I've been able to get xrandr to work so that I can add other resolutions myself, and then I can put them in a script to run on boot, but holy crap is that annoying. Windows and Mac OS X have no problem detecting what these displays support, but X has been dropping the ball on this for years.

w1ntermute 14y ago

I'm not sure why people are always complaining about multi-monitor handling on Linux. It's always worked just fine for me. With an open source graphics driver, there's RandR and various frontends for it. With any proprietary driver, you use their own UI for it.

jimux2 14y ago
Setup has always been a very minor annoyance, but as a gamer who uses multiple monitors, Linux has been a simple no-go for me. I proselytize Linux everywhere, but is mostly just a development platform for me, because of this combination. I recently got on the Steam for Linux beta, and it's fantastic. But most games I have to play in windowed mode, and some I just can't play at all, because it spans across my two screens (with very different dimensions and resolutions). Sure, I could disable one monitor, but that's more trouble than it's worth, when I can still take advantage of my 2nd monitor just fine in Windows. In Windows, games only fullscreen on one screen, I can still see my gmail feed just fine on my second monitor. Linux does a lot of things very well, but multiple monitors has always been a bit of a mess when fullscreened apps are involved.
- ori_b 14y ago
  I've found that's generally a program bug. When the programs try to find the root window, and create an OVERRIDE_REDIRECT window that covers the entire screen, they behave poorly. They should be setting the EWMH fullscreen hint. To be honest, I haven't seen a program in ages that gets this wrong. Do you have any examples?
  - jimux2 14y ago
    I'd have to get home and boot up Linux to try them out, but the ones coming to mind are Darwinia, Trine, and World of Goo. Is there a way that I, as a user, could manually set that fullscreen hint?
    - ori_b 14y ago
      You could set the fullscreen hint yourself. The problem is that setting it on an override redirect window will do nothing, because override redirect exists solely for the purpose of telling the WM "Never touch this window." You would have to figure out how to make it use a regular window. It's unfortunate. The mechanism to allow the WM to handle fullscreening intelligently is there, but it seems that the developers weren't aware of it.

aroman 14y ago

This looks great! I've come to really rely on the "closed clamshell mode" that was shown off last in the video -- Macs have had this for quite a while now. But it's always really great to see some work being done in this field. Kudos to the developers and the sponsors!

eatporktoo 14y ago

I think that "Magic Monitor" oversells this. I expected something much more... magic...

foolano 14y ago

This is great news. I've been using a patch that I made to address this annoying issue in KDE for a year now: https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103356/ https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103356/ My patch was more of a hack than anything else but it did its job. I'm happy though that I won't need to patch every new KDE version any longer :)

frozenport 14y ago

aerosnap is a feature I sorely miss on Linux. I have been able to recreate its functionality for a single screen, but I have been unable to make it work correctly for a dual screen setup. It seems that have multiple screens in Linux creates a drawing canvas that is rectangular in shape and it is not clear how to find out the more complicated 2 rectangle shape. I would like to see this issue addressed.