[LAPTOP] Mutiple monitors + several panels + switch monitors

[leonardopsantos]

Hello all!


I'm a long time KDE user (since 2001) and I currently use a Acer laptop with Kubuntu 14.04 ( KDE 4.13.3). Dut to my routine, I end up using three different monitor setups:


A) At home I have a single external monitor;
B) At work (local college) I use the laptop screen, sometimes with a projector for my lectures;
C) At the university I'm doing my Master's I have two external monitors ( Intel Haswell works fine with THREE :-D screens ).


Everything works almost perfectly, but I'd like to have separate taskbars for each monitor. I *KNOW* how to do it, add a new empty panel for the non-primary monitors and add a taskbar to each panel. Setup the taskbars to show only the apps for each screen. This works fine.


What doesn't work fine is that every time I switch the monitor configuration (home -> work -> lab -> work...) the config gets destroyed. If I set up the three screens ( laptop + two external ), then get home and plug a single monitor, one of the extra panels gets in front of the others. And if I go from three screen to just one, I get two extra panels in front of the default panel.


Is there a way to save the panel settings for each screen setup I have ? Maybe using an activity ? I can code, so if I could switch the current KDE activity with a script based on what is plugged in, that would be fine.


Thanks a lot!!

[oshunluvr]

Hmmm, I don't know if Activities will do it. Have you considered three log ins? Sounds ungainly at first, but with correct permissions and folder sharing where needed I think it might work.

Like: Have home, work, student as three users. Give them all the same primary group - leonard, make sure all your permissions allow group access to everything, link your Documents, Downloads, email, etc. folders to a single location. You could even have different .xprofiles to correctly set up your monitors if that's needed.

[SecretCode]

Which screen do you define as the primary X screen? The internal one?

And does your setup allow automatic switching between the different configs, or do you have to manually change it?

My experience, with NVIDIA, is that I have to go into nvidia-settings to enable or disable the external monitor (I haven't try very hard to find ways of automating it), but that the Plasma widgets are preserved on the correct monitors without any hassle.

[leonardopsantos]

oshunluvr , one nice thing is that I put the laptop's lid down, unplug the monitors, go home, plug them back and wham, everything works. With Windows 7. Now I *KNOW* that Linux and KDE specially always had good multimonitor support, and I used it on the old days with two video cards and xinerama, so I can't think of a reason that KDE should be any less supportive than Windows on multimonitor support.

SecretCode, I define as the primary screen the largest one. At home, the external monitor, at the lab the leftmost external monitor. I use a bash script that is called from udev when a monitor is plugged in, it uses xrandr to check what's plugged and then sets everything up. In theory, it should be automatic, but sometimes it doesn't work and I call the script manually.

Home: xrandr --output HDMI2 --preferred --primary --left-of eDP1 --output eDP1 --preferred --right-of HDMI2 --output DP1 --off
Work: xrandr --output DP1 --off --output HDMI2 --off --output eDP1 --preferred --primary
Lab: xrandr --output DP1 --preferred --left-of HDMI2 --primary --output HDMI2 --preferred --left-of eDP1 --output eDP1 --preferred


Thanks a lot!

[vinnywright]

I think I have a solution for you ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,it works @hear for 2 monitors ,,,,,,,, go to system settings>workspace>virtual desktops and tick the "diferent widgets for eatch desktop" and then apply .

on the secondary monitor add the taskmanager widget to the desktop(no panel) size as you wish ,,,,,,in the taskmanager settings tick "only show tasks from the curent screen" and click apply.

@hear I can turn on and off the secondary monitor and the task manager widget will not "move" to the primary.

I dont have a third screen to test that with ,,,,but should act the same.

on 14.04

VINNY

[leonardopsantos]

I think I have a solution for you ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,it works @hear for 2 monitors ,,,,,,,, go to system settings>workspace>virtual desktops and tick the "diferent widgets for eatch desktop" and then apply .

on the secondary monitor add the taskmanager widget to the desktop(no panel) size as you wish ,,,,,,in the taskmanager settings tick "only show tasks from the curent screen" and click apply.

@hear I can turn on and off the secondary monitor and the task manager widget will not "move" to the primary.

I dont have a third screen to test that with ,,,,but should act the same.

on 14.04

VINNY

Thanks, I didn't try the "diferent widgets for eatch desktop" setting, mine is off. I'll enable it and see if it changes something.

[vinnywright]

Thanks, I didn't try the "diferent widgets for eatch desktop" setting, mine is off. I'll enable it and see if it changes something.

keep in mind that this dose not apply to panels ,,,,,,,,thay will still move to the "avalable" monitor .

VINNY

[leonardopsantos]

Hello all. After a week working with multiple panels, I can confirm that they don't work properly. When I switch from a config with more monitors to one with less, the panel that was on the monitor that was removed indeed moves to another monitor. If I go back to the config with more monitors, the panel doesn't come back and I end up with 3 panel one on top of the other.

I guess this is a KDE bug.

Thanks!

[SecretCode]

OK, it looks like I see the same thing. My secondary panel is autohide (and I don't often switch monitor config) so it hasn't been obvious. But after switching to single and back to dual, the second panel is on the primary monitor.

Do you want to raise a KDE bug for this? At bugs.kde.org

[leonardopsantos]

@SecretCode

I must confess that I was (maybe) overcomplicating things by using a bash script with xrandr to switch the configuration each time a monitor was plugged in or out. I removed this and now I'm trying to use KDE's switcher, maybe I was messing up with it when I used xrandr. I'll wait another week or so and if I notice that the behavior is the same, I'll raise a bug for KDE (have a login there and everything).

Thanks a lot!!

[leonardopsantos]

Ok, I can confirm this is likely a bug, as the taskbar on the second monitor is not restored after I unplug and plug back in the external monitor.

I'll file a KDE bug.

Thanks a lot for your help!