[GRLUG] Linux and multiple monitors

[Roberto Villarreal]

On Tue June 19 2012 9:13:04 AM Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Tue, 2012-06-19 at 08:55 -0400, Brad DeVries wrote:
> > On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 8:45 AM, Ben Rousch <brousch at gmail.com> wrote:
> >         It is definitely still an issue. I had projector detection
> >         fail last
> 
> Very much depends on the hardware.
> 
> >         night using the proprietary Nvidia drivers.
> 
> The proprietary drives *SUCK*.  Trying to do external / dual displays
> was terrible.  It would work, then not, then work, then get dorked up,
> then work again, ugh.  Sometimes clicking detect-displays a dozen times
> worked.

I think for every person with this experience, you're going to find another 
person with the exact opposite experience (me).  I've had exactly two issues 
with the proprietary driver: one, trying to get it work alongside both an ATI 
proprietary driver as well as a Matrox one (yes, I'm a glutton for 
punishment), and second finding out that you can't have two different nvidia 
modules loaded at the same time.  But neither of these are a typical user 
scenario...

Now, if they provide a Triview/Quadview equivalent to their Twinview so I can 
stop using Xinerama, I'll turn from a supporter into a cheerleader!

> nouveau has been very reliable for me on my last two laptops and my
> workstation.

And my new non-bleeding edge computer wouldn't even boot because of that 
module, not even into "recovery mode".  Had to disable it via altered grub 
command line to even boot into the system to replace it with the binary.

It (nouveau) worked fine on my laptop, but is just quicker with the binary.  
Only issue is with the third or fourth hibernate without a reboot, then things 
can get wonky.

> > I've had no problems when I use my laptop with Intel graphics.
> 
> Ditto, I have no issues using my hardware that has recent Intel GPUs.
> And mirrored displays with a project have been very reliable with those
> for some time [older ones do not dual-display well at all - hardware
> limitation].
> 
> > I've actually had pretty good result recently.  I have a laptop with
> > an Intel HD Graphics card and it's worked flawlessly with Ubuntu in
> > these three configurations:
> > 1) Just the laptop's display.
> > 2) The laptop's display and a HD TV.
> > 3) Two external monitors when the laptop is on its docking station.
> > It's even remembered the layouts across multiple OS upgrades.
> 
> Yep,  same on openSUSE 12.1 / GNOME3 with Intell and Nouveau.