dual monitors

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

On 02/21/2011 01:14 PM, Tom Metro wrote:
> This weekend I attached a 2nd monitor to my laptop and designated it the
> "primary display" in the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" applet. I have it
> running in "TwinView" mode where the two monitors share a contiguous
> desktop.
> 
> I've ran across plenty of mentions of issues with multiple monitors in
> X, and sure enough it didn't take long to spot them. I could see the
> occasional, obscure app. not handling it well (like DockBarX, or Bless
> Hex editor, both of which have problems) but I'm seeing issues with some
> main stream apps like OpenOffice. OOo puts up its splash screen centered
> across both displays. Then opens its window on on the laptop's screen,
> rather than the primary display. Even after manually moving the window
> to the correct display, every time it opens a dialog it goes back to the
> laptop's display.
> 
> It probably doesn't help that the primary display ended up being to the
> right of the laptop. I have a feeling poorly coded defaults would tend
> to work better if things were the other way around, but this ordering
> fits the physical setup better.
> 
> So I'm wondering, is there an X configuration (for GNOME 2.28.1
> w/nvidia-glx-185) that is the "path of least resistance" for getting
> dual monitors to work with the fewest problems?

Sounds like it thinks you have one large display instead of two
independent ones.  Are you using nvidia's tool to set up twinview?  In
their tool, "X Server Display Configuration", does it show two monitors?
 You can use that tool to set which is the primary, and how they are
oriented.  Are the monitors of the same resolution?

For reference, I have twinview enabled, and am using two monitors with
identical resolution.  Splash screens show up in the center of one
screen (instead of split across the middle of both like you describe).

HTH,
Matt