[ale] budget dual-head advice?

[JD]

My experience is with cheap nvidia cards.  Basically, if they have 2
outputs then you don't need to worry.  All of them will have 256MB of
RAM which is more than enough. $40 will get you a card with 1GB easy.

Setting up dual monitors on nvidia is pretty easy. The first google
search result (Ubuntu Dual Monitor with nVidia Driver) for this issue is
my blog.  Unfortunately, I'm working a software issue today, so the page
is down, but here's the google cached version:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4qVCw0DH9eAJ:blog.jdpfu.com/2010/05/12/ubuntu-10-04-dual-monitor-with-nvidia-driver+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=ubuntu&source=encrypted.google.com

There aren't any Ubuntu-specific commands used except for the package
manager command to load the proprietary nvidia drivers. I can't imagine
why the other steps wouldn't work for other distros.

Are you sure that you need/want an AGP card and not PCI-x?

On 08/31/2011 10:36 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> I just slapped CEntOS 6 on a box with some agp radeon card having dvi
> and vga connectors. Dual display just worked. The only thing I had to do
> was tell it which screen was on the left.
> Yes. Nvidia must be confugured using the nvidia display manager tool
> shipping with the closed source driver.
> The neuvou [sic] driver was too unstable the last time I tried it in
> 2009. It's should be much better now in current Ubuntu and Fedora.
> 
> On Aug 31, 2011 10:13 AM, "Björn Gustafsson" <bg-ale at bjorng.net
> <mailto:bg-ale at bjorng.net>> wrote:
>> My single-display system at home makes me sad when I have to work from my
>> house, so I'm looking to create a dual-display setup on my Ubuntu box.
>> Switching between virtual displays just isn't good enough for me. I'm just
>> looking for more screen real estate, not gaming or other high frame-rate
>> applications, so performance isn't a big issue as long as I get the
> maximum
>> resolution for my buck.
>>
>> I've been pricing monitors that can handle 1920x1080, but haven't done the
>> math yet to see how much video memory that requires.
>>
>> Pricewatch pointed me at two budget-minded dual-head DVI cards, and I was
>> wondering if anyone had pointers on which might be preferable. At work I
>> have an ATI Radeon dual-head setup on Ubuntu so I'm confident that works.
>> I've been reading that nVidia-based dual display configurations are
> more of
>> a hassle to set up, so that may drive me in the other direction.
>>
>>
> http://www.txmicro.com/1GB-DDR2-AGP-Dual-DVI-Video-Card-w-TV-Out-HDCP-p-5117.html
>>
>>
> http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=01GP31526KR&vid=603&src=PW
> <http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=01GP31526KR&vid=603&src=PW>
>>
>> Any advice would be appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Björn