dual monitors and dual desktops

[nixgeek]

I've been searching for many days on my issue to no avail.

Its quite simple.

I have dual monitors setup which work just fine in Ubuntu. I get two desktops.
However when I switch to KDE I never get a 2nd Desktop. It has no Windows
manager at all.

I've upgraded from Kubuntu 8.04 to 8.10.

I now have both ubuntu-desktop and kubuntu-desktop installed.

Any advice?

[daddy4count]

Re: dual monitors and dual desktops

what graphics card are you running?

I assume you must have initiated the non-free drivers under ubuntu... did you do so for kubuntu?

[nixgeek]

Re: dual monitors and dual desktops

I have a Nvidia 8800 GTX card... driver installed via envyng.

I then used nvidia-settings to setup dual displays then saved that as the xorg.conf file.

[nixgeek]

Re: dual monitors and dual desktops

FYI... In KDE 3.5 I had no issues with getting dual desktops.

Any ideas? I really miss KDE. I loathe this Gnome crap.

[KeithZG]

Re: dual monitors and dual desktops

I know there's definitely wonkiness with KDE4's kdm and TwinView. Still, really? Does nvidia-settings show both displays? What does it say under "X Server Display Configuration"? (it should show both screens in the layout box, and should say "Configuration: TwinView", I know nearly every upgrade I end up having to re-set up this stuff).

Are there any backup xorg.conf files in your /etc/X11/ folder? If so maybe you should just restore one that looks like it's from the pre-8.10 date, although I hear xorg.conf is largely ignored by the new Xorg....still, worth a try too.

But mainly I'm curious as to what the actual setup is right now, so as aforementioned, what do the settings look like under "X Server Display Configuration" in nvidia-settings? Furthermore you could paste in or attach your xorg.conf file, which might help too.

[nixgeek]

Re: dual monitors and dual desktops

Hmm is Twinview required for Dual Desktops? I don't want a mirror if thats what that does - i.e. same apps and mouse movements are dup'd in both monitors.

Yes nvidia-settings shows two displays.
Configuration: Separate X screen

My xorg.conf file is located here

http://www.linuxstuff.info/xorg.conf

I've tried using specific older xorg.conf files to no avail.

[KeithZG]

Re: dual monitors and dual desktops

Hmm is Twinview required for Dual Desktops? I don't want a mirror if thats what that does - i.e. same apps and mouse movements are dup'd in both monitors.

Naw, TwinView allows two desktops to act as if they're one, so things can be dragged across, sit in the middle, blah blah etc. It's kindof a hack actually, heh, but a useful one (it's similar to Xinerama in many ways). My current setup is a 19" 4:3 screen at 1280x1024 and a 19" 16:9 at 1440x900 to the right of it (and that one being the "first" monitor); back in the day when I first set up this kind of asymmetrical dualscreen stuff it was pretty much impossible to do on Nvidia hardware (and have it working as a single desktop) except with TwinView. These days I'm mad I've gotten so used to this setup since it's screwing me out of adding a third monitor but for your purposes I think it'd be exactly what you're looking for.

My xorg.conf looks more like this, to cut in only the relevant parts:

Section "ServerLayout"
  Identifier   "Default Layout"
  Screen   0 "Screen0" 0 0
  InputDevice  "Generic Keyboard"
  InputDevice  "Configured Mouse"
  InputDevice  "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
  InputDevice  "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
  InputDevice  "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier   "BenQ FP93GX"
  VendorName   "BenQ"
  ModelName   "BenQ P992"
  HorizSync    30.0 - 98.0
  VertRefresh   50.0 - 160.0
  Gamma      1
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier   "Monitor0"
  VendorName   "Unknown"
  ModelName   "Samsung SyncMaster"
  HorizSync    30.0 - 81.0
  VertRefresh   56.0 - 75.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
  Identifier   "Videocard0"
  Driver     "nvidia"
  VendorName   "NVIDIA Corporation"
  BoardName   "GeForce 7800 GTX"
  BusID     "PCI:3:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier   "Screen0"
  Device     "Videocard0"
  Monitor    "Monitor0"
  DefaultDepth  24
  Option     "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"
  Option     "TwinView" "1"
  Option     "metamodes" "DFP-0: 1440x900 +1280+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
  Option     "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

I think that's all the sections that actually have to do with making my setup work. Still, just enabling TwinView in nvidia-settings and restarting X might get you where you need to go without much fiddling.