5 ms·

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,

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.
      - jimux2 14y ago
        Hmm, perhaps there could be another approach. Like lying to the certain applications about the resolution of the 'screen', to return the dimensions of the primary monitor, and then map coordinate 0,0 to the location we want the app to start at.
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  In addition to the display woes I find many of the games in the Humble Bundle grab all keystrokes. This means nothing happens when you press the volume keys, and most egregiously when you press Alt-Tab! I've found things better when using Intel graphics than Nvidia. Of course no such problems on Windows at all on the same machine.
mgkimsal 14y ago
Perhaps mistercow's comment (right below yours right now) is just one example of why people are "always complaining". http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973598 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973598 "It's always worked just fine for me" Guess what? Even when things didn't work for me, I'd generally have people saying the same thing: "works for me - I dunno what your problem is". That's annoying, and also not helpful - yes, often you don't know why it works, so you can't help anyone else when it doesn't work for them. Also, years of "works for me", coupled with "hey, now XYZ works!" in next releases (when - hey, it already supposedly "just works") are the sorts of things people "complain" about.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  He's expecting support for high-resolution CRT monitors? I haven't seen one of those in at least 5 years. Given the limited resources available to the community, I'd say that's definitely not a priority. The next thing I'd like to see is better support for high DPI screens, not support for a decades-old technology.
  - mgkimsal 14y ago
    However... CRTs were definitely standard for the more than a decade. During that time, many of the same people now saying "everything works for me" were also saying "everything works for me" with CRTs, and they clearly don't (at least in the GP post). And I don't think anyone went out of their way to remove/break CRT support in earlier versions - it was never quite there for everyone. Essentially for me, and others I know, the trust in Linux on the desktop has been abused, and it'll be a while before I ever embrace it again as my day to day workstation (VMs and headless servers are where Linux has been relegated in my day to day work).
    - pm90 14y ago
      The problem with linux has always been that even if you're using the same version of the OS (kernel +userland apps) your hardware is likely to be different, and this breaks functionality for a lot of users Im not saying that your problem was the same. Im just tryimg to illustrate that a lot of things can go wrong, and it isnt (always) that other users are lying about it
truncate 14y ago
I agree, for power users usually xrandr command is far more quicker than cycling through layouts. One feature I liked here is not going to sleep when lid is closed. I think to avoid that in normal case would be to set power settings to "do nothing" when lid is closed whenever you want this feature.
michael_h 14y ago
People have a huge amount of trouble when using more than two monitors. I have two video cards and three monitors and I _just want to use all of them as a single desktop_. If I have two monitors, I can use TwinView and everything is great. When I add that third monitor, I have to use it as a separate xscreen, so it has it's own gnome panels and I can't drag a window over to it. If there is a solution, it's not obvious to me.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- anoother 14y ago
  Sounds like you're using the proprietary Nvidia driver? Set all your screens to 'separate X screen' and then check the 'Use Xinerama' box. You may have to set the correct screen offsets in the Nvidia control panel (or xorg.conf) after restarting X. I have this setup at work, and it works very nicely apart from the fact that only one of the two GPUs seems to be capable of displaying OpenGL content when connected in this way.
  - michael_h 14y ago
    Yes, I'm using the proprietary drivers (for a variety of reasons, but CUDA support chief among them) and I had that exact setup for about five minutes. Using Xinerama forces compositing off, which makes for a less than snappy experience. I have three Dell 3000wfp's and without compositing turned on, the tearing is more than noticeable. I might be able to tolerate it, but I know that it is capable of working nicely (a la TwinView).
  - mbell 14y ago
    > 'Use Xinerama' box Xinerama is old, buggy and more or less deprecated at this point. Also compositing doesn't work with it enabled which causes other issues.
    - anoother 14y ago
      > Xinerama is old, buggy and more or less deprecated at this point It is? What's the alternative?

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.
    - jimux2 14y ago
      Hmm, perhaps there could be another approach. Like lying to the certain applications about the resolution of the 'screen', to return the dimensions of the primary monitor, and then map coordinate 0,0 to the location we want the app to start at.
rogerbinns 14y ago
In addition to the display woes I find many of the games in the Humble Bundle grab all keystrokes. This means nothing happens when you press the volume keys, and most egregiously when you press Alt-Tab! I've found things better when using Intel graphics than Nvidia. Of course no such problems on Windows at all on the same machine.

mgkimsal 14y ago

Perhaps mistercow's comment (right below yours right now) is just one example of why people are "always complaining". http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973598 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4973598 "It's always worked just fine for me" Guess what? Even when things didn't work for me, I'd generally have people saying the same thing: "works for me - I dunno what your problem is". That's annoying, and also not helpful - yes, often you don't know why it works, so you can't help anyone else when it doesn't work for them. Also, years of "works for me", coupled with "hey, now XYZ works!" in next releases (when - hey, it already supposedly "just works") are the sorts of things people "complain" about.

w1ntermute 14y ago
He's expecting support for high-resolution CRT monitors? I haven't seen one of those in at least 5 years. Given the limited resources available to the community, I'd say that's definitely not a priority. The next thing I'd like to see is better support for high DPI screens, not support for a decades-old technology.
- mgkimsal 14y ago
  However... CRTs were definitely standard for the more than a decade. During that time, many of the same people now saying "everything works for me" were also saying "everything works for me" with CRTs, and they clearly don't (at least in the GP post). And I don't think anyone went out of their way to remove/break CRT support in earlier versions - it was never quite there for everyone. Essentially for me, and others I know, the trust in Linux on the desktop has been abused, and it'll be a while before I ever embrace it again as my day to day workstation (VMs and headless servers are where Linux has been relegated in my day to day work).
  - pm90 14y ago
    The problem with linux has always been that even if you're using the same version of the OS (kernel +userland apps) your hardware is likely to be different, and this breaks functionality for a lot of users Im not saying that your problem was the same. Im just tryimg to illustrate that a lot of things can go wrong, and it isnt (always) that other users are lying about it

truncate 14y ago

I agree, for power users usually xrandr command is far more quicker than cycling through layouts. One feature I liked here is not going to sleep when lid is closed. I think to avoid that in normal case would be to set power settings to "do nothing" when lid is closed whenever you want this feature.

michael_h 14y ago

People have a huge amount of trouble when using more than two monitors. I have two video cards and three monitors and I _just want to use all of them as a single desktop_. If I have two monitors, I can use TwinView and everything is great. When I add that third monitor, I have to use it as a separate xscreen, so it has it's own gnome panels and I can't drag a window over to it. If there is a solution, it's not obvious to me.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
anoother 14y ago
Sounds like you're using the proprietary Nvidia driver? Set all your screens to 'separate X screen' and then check the 'Use Xinerama' box. You may have to set the correct screen offsets in the Nvidia control panel (or xorg.conf) after restarting X. I have this setup at work, and it works very nicely apart from the fact that only one of the two GPUs seems to be capable of displaying OpenGL content when connected in this way.
- michael_h 14y ago
  Yes, I'm using the proprietary drivers (for a variety of reasons, but CUDA support chief among them) and I had that exact setup for about five minutes. Using Xinerama forces compositing off, which makes for a less than snappy experience. I have three Dell 3000wfp's and without compositing turned on, the tearing is more than noticeable. I might be able to tolerate it, but I know that it is capable of working nicely (a la TwinView).
- mbell 14y ago
  > 'Use Xinerama' box Xinerama is old, buggy and more or less deprecated at this point. Also compositing doesn't work with it enabled which causes other issues.
  - anoother 14y ago
    > Xinerama is old, buggy and more or less deprecated at this point It is? What's the alternative?