[ale] Seeking horror/success stories & trends for double monitor setup

[James Taylor]

I'm a little late responding...
I use opensuse 12.2 on my notebook, which has intel video, and I do a lot of work with external monitors and projectors on site with customers.
With opensuse, when I plug in an external monitor, it notifies me that a new monitor has been seen and asks me if I want to configure it. I set the correct screen resolutions for my internal and the external monitor, and set the relative screen locations, usually internal  for the origin and external to the right.

It configures the monitors dynamically, and with no dead areas.

-jt
 
 

James Taylor
678-697-9420
james.taylor at eastcobbgroup.com



>>> Tom Freeman <tfreeman at intel.digichem.net> 3/9/2013   06:39 PM >>> 

I have experimented a little bit running double monitor heads off a single 
graphics card (nvidia), where the displays were not same generation 
devices. I was working with twinview (think that is the term) under the 
then current Fedora release (17? sounds right as it was last fall). I got 
the whole thing working easily enough, but with enough potholes to make 
life less enchanting. I also got things going on an ASUS laptop, again 
nvidia adapter, under Ubuntu 12.04 with basically the same experience.

My goal is to set up a system with enough screen real estate to do online 
grading of scanned papers, hold virtual office hours with a video chat 
system (nobody shows up, but the school expects such and will check) 
without covering that up so I miss people, and hopefully be able to page 
back and forth through the key. All of this in a big enough format so old 
age eyes can see well enough to stay focused on the job and not on the 
navigation.

On the basis of last fall's efforts, I know a few potholes to miss.

Big thing for me will probably be a wide horizontal area to park things in 
and on. I was trying to work in a restricted space (left to right), and 
there wasn't enough physical space for all the stuff I needed. This I 
think I can handle...

Next biggest thing, for me at least, was that the old monitors I was using 
did not want to agree on a usuable, common verticle dimenstion, leaving 
one screen with part of the desktop chopped off. That blank area was a 
wonderful place to lose things. Of course, if I could get paid to lose 
things, I'd get filthy rich, so that doesn't help.

Because of what I am doing, getting both screens completely color matched 
isn't that crucial, although the best I achieved was pretty jaring at 
times. I _will_ need to get that challenge sorted better.

Now, assuming that the cat's vet bill, the girl friend's birthday bills, 
fuel prices don't skyrocket, and I can remember the grandtwins birthday 
stuff without going extremely broke - I have a system which needs full 
replacement (power supply, motherboard, video card(s), hard disk, and 
probably a double arm load of USB ports), so I'd like to do it well. I 
turn to the group to get a  handle on what stuff makes adequate sense for 
an adjunct instructor. I'm not looking for exact specs, but I am 
looking for ideas to implement for success and ideas to avoid for success. 
The time frame is at least a month and a half out - possibly longer.

Do I want to run two separate X systems - and if I do is this still a 
unified desktop? I assume it is possible with two X systems to run both a 
video card and the built in video chip set, but is this a good way to go 
to get possibly wildly mismatched monitors to cooperate without blank 
parts?

Is it likely feasable to get mismatched monitors to behave themselves, or 
is the aggrivation factor such that a purpose bought will save their cost 
in ulcers & hair pulling?

Thanks for the use of your bandwidth


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