Expanding the desktop with 2 montitors

[mbrodeur at nexttime.com (Matthew J. Brodeur)]

On Wed, 8 Aug 2001, George Flaherty wrote:

> I have an extra monitor and I would like to use 2 monitors for my LINUX
> box. Now I have seen this before for NT, but I don't know if there is a
> LINUX version. In the end I would like to be able to use both monitors
> for a single desktop session. Therefore when the mouse move to the right
> side of the left-hand monitor, it will jump (be focused) on the
> right-hand side monitor.
>
> Is this even possible (and with in reason $$) for LINUX? I am assuming I
> will need to purchase a graphics card that will take two monitors?


   I have done this in two different ways in the past.  One way is to put
two graphics cards into the system and run the Xinerama extension under
XFree 4.x+.  At my last job I was using an AGP Voodoo3 and a PCI ATI Rage
128 driving dual 19" Sony monitors, with a 3200x1200 desktop.  It worked
nicely and there's a HowTo (http://www.nexttime.com/LDP/HOWTO/Xinerama-HOWTO.html)
that walks you through it.
   The other method is to use a dual-head card.  Some have two graphics
chips on one card, and therefore still require something like Xinerama to
merge the display.  Others (such as some NVidia based cards with TwinView)
can handle the multiple outputs between the hardware and the driver,
making X think it's actually dealing with a single oddly shaped display
device.
   The advantage of the TwinView method is that you can run GL apps (like
Quake 3 Arena) across both monitors, while Xinerama can't.


-- 
     -Matt

QOTD:
	I'm not a nerd -- I'm "socially challenged".


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