Multiple-Display Power Tools For Linux? 410
Posted
by
timothy
from the it's-a-hard-knock-life dept.
from the it's-a-hard-knock-life dept.
shift writes "I've used multiple monitors for years (currently 3) and find that Linux is lacking in power tools for such setups. Even Windows 7 has added the feature to move a window from screen to screen with keyboard shortcuts. Are any of the major desktop environments adding such features? I'm still stuck on FVWM and have defined functions to swap the contents of screens as well as move windows from screen to screen and so on. But this just seems like such basic functionality people would want in multi-screen setups that I'm surprised I don't find any of these features in our latest desktop environments."
Re:Multiple desktops (Score:4, Insightful)
Would be nice wouldn't it? Unfortunately the only way I have seen multiple monitor setups working is each workspace just gets much bigger, and shares all the monitors. For example, I start playing a movie in workspace 3, then drag the movie to the top of my workspace to where my tv is, then full screen. Then, when I flip to workspace 2 to check my email, my movie gets flipped away from also, until I move back to workspace 3 again. Not the way I would have expected it to work, but I have just been getting used to it.
I hope you're not a troll (Score:3, Insightful)
Partially correct, he is (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's not pretend there was no problem with multiple monitors at times.
To me, Linux has been ready for the desktop for 10 years, and I've been using it almost exclusively. So, that's said.
Though, using dual monitor out of the box has failed me at the first instance a good number of times. And that's far away from perfect. Because I know how to handle Xorg.0.log and xorg.conf; and I know where to post for help; but Aunty Tilly doesn't.
Example 1: 1600x1200 next to 1024x768, Gnome, year:2009. Failed. Took me a few hours until I found a filed bug, that Xorg would not accept a higher resolution of the virtual desktop than 2048x2048. Placing 1600x1200 above 1024x768 finally worked; based on Gnome's GUI. Still not good.
Example 2: Playing with KDE (4.3.2-4), that same thing doesn't. The desktop configuration applet (Computer Administration->Display) simply doesn't allow to un-mirror the two screens; contrary to the 'Display' applet in Gnome. Another need to resort to Google, and a forum. Solution: I need to issue a number of xrandr commands to split the two displays to show separate content. Not good.
Example 3: Having another box with Nvidia-card with TV out. The same KDE (4.3.2-4) applet simply is not aware of the TV output. It shows one standard display, the LCD monitor. Over. Of course, the Nvidia-applet works fine, doing anything with the TV of my liking. But it would require the user to know that she uses a Nvidia card, and that there is another applet that she needs to use. Not good.
The problem, AFAIK, is not that on Linux one couldn't; but one can't, once too often, not simply out of the box.
Re:Multiple desktops (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Multiple desktops (Score:1, Insightful)
I do this all the time... I use Fluxbox. Maximize the movie on my 16:9 landscape monitor, then make the window STICKY. (I happen to have keyboard shortcuts set up for this, but you can do it multiple ways in each of the major window managers) Then just flip through the virtual desktop/workspaces with another key-binding I set up.
In fact, I don't understand quite what the original poster is getting at. I've been running multi-monitors in Linux since about 2003. Mostly Nvidia cards, but have done so with the later ATI/AMD cards occasionally as well. Right now I'm running 3 monitors on a couple of (admittedly OLD) nvidia GeForce 5500FX cards... One AGP, one PCI. The trick is to configure Xorg.conf properly.
One complaint I do have--using the Xinerama extension still currently borks up the XRANDR extension. But for the few programs I use that need that, I have a custom ServerLayout in my xorg.conf which starts 2 separate X-sessions. The PCI drives one, the AGP drives a dual-screen via Nvidia's TwinView driver option.
FWIW.
Re:Separate Workspaces? (Score:4, Insightful)
Honestly why? You can drag windows on one workspace to another, the keyboard shortcuts to move windows from one workspace to another already exist.
So why not have each monitor be it's own workspace, then just move windows between them?
Re:Keyboard Shortcut in GNOME (Score:3, Insightful)
The point of computers is to save time (Score:4, Insightful)
Then there's the other huge advantage. I have a dozen twin head machines with similar video cards and similar monitors, and new ones end up being about the same. I only had to tweak the xorg.conf file ONCE (took about a minute) and now I just copy it to each machine. With no portable file and a GUI tool I would have to log onto each machine and click away at a maze of twisty menus and boxes to get a configuration I already have.
Configuration files are the way of saying - "just do what this other machine does and don't ask me to repeat myself" - vastly superior to a GUI micromanagement method. Generating the files is a different story, but the important thing is to be able to do something with them to avoid pointless busy work.
Re:Tiling (Score:2, Insightful)
On a side note, it's interesting that the proliferation of Lisp, Haskell, and other powerful functional programming languages has created a demand for a different kind of window manager that is written in, and can be extended with, the language. It's almost as if programmers began to see the limitations of static, C/C++ programmed environments after they started using these languages, and then started to build up new environments more suitable for high-level programming. Is this the beginning of the end for the traditional Unix way of always running back to the C languages?
Couldn't the same have been asked of GNU Emacs?
Re:Issues I've had. (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because you can post a screenshot of a Linux machine running multi-head, doesn't rebut at all the fact that it's a pain in the ass to set up, doesn't work consistently between window managers. In short, your productivity on a Linux box is inversely proportional to the number of monitors you've got hanging off it, the very opposite of the point of having them.
Now I see Microsoft have finally decided to breathe some life into their dual-head code that they haven't touched since Windows 98, and come up with something that doesn't blow chunks. Bravo. Now their users can join the Mac users who have had dual head for longer than most of than remember.
Now don't get me wrong, I like Linux, I run it, and I will run it for as long as I need and can get it*. But I don't get all silly and got plugging displays and mice into it. Linux is not a desktop operating environment, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise (such as myself, two years ago, before I wised up).
* maybe another ten years? It'll more likely be outlawed than ever die.
Re:Issues I've had. (Score:4, Insightful)
Which would mean that if I had four monitors on my machine, I could only do one third as much work. The only way it could be true would be if I were compelled to spend three quarters of my working day reconfiguring my monitor setup, every single day.
I hope I won't sound too much like a zealot for saying this, but if that is your experience of Linux sir, then I humbly submit that you are doing it wrong.
I take your point that setting up multi-display systems could still be easier, but let's not be ridiculous.
Re:Multiple desktops (Score:1, Insightful)
No you could not. Each workspace uses ALL monitors.
Re:Issues I've had. (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is a desktop OS. it just has some rough edges for installation and a couple of ease of use problems.
So, the same as every other OS then?
I'm tired of people making out that Linux isn't "ready for the desktop" because of a few minor problems, as if all the OSes they think are "ready for the desktop" are perfect. News flash: every OS has its problems, sure you may think that another OS is "better" than Linux because you have already learnt to live with its problems, but that's pretty much missing the point. From my perspective (having been using Linux as a desktop OS for around 12 years, and pretty much exclusively for the last 7), the likes of Windows and OS X are far less "ready for the desktop" than Linux, probably mostly because they present a whole new set of problems that I have to deal with.
One thing about Linux is important to me though - if a problem is a big enough deal to me then I _can_ fix it myself, whereas under many other OSes this simply isn't an option.
the maximaize window bug
What "maximize window bug"? I'll admit that I don't have a lot of use for maximizing windows, but on the odd occasion that I do it seems to work perfectly.
Re:Issues I've had. (Score:4, Insightful)
I've setup quite a few multiple monitor setups using Linux. Some work out of the box. But most required some significant xorg.conf hackery. And the documentation for xorg.conf is cryptic at best. I didn't say it wasn't possible. I didn't say it was hard in all cases. I didn't say that once setup it didn't work very well... What I did say is that it's no ways near as easy as with Windows. Don't believe me? Go Google "Dual monitor Ubuntu", and look at the replies to the forums... 46 PAGES of people with problems? And you all are tearing me apart saying that Linux isn't that good at it?
As I've said before, there are somethings that Linux does REALLY well, and multiple monitors is NOT one... Once you get it setup, it does work quite well. But getting it setup can be an exercise in madness...
Re:Partially correct, he is (Score:1, Insightful)
Man, it gets tiring hearing this kind of crap about "ready" all the time.
Aunt Tilly doesn't define "the desktop", and doesn't need two monitors. Linux isn't and never will be for everyone in the world. Just like Windows, MacOS, SunOS, NeXT, Irix, BeOS, etc aren't. Linux has niches that it excels within. Those niches know how to read documentation. And it's just fine to target a specific audience - like how Windows targets the ignorant masses (in the dictionary sense), and MacOS targets the ignorent snobs. They seem to be doing just fine, as do various targeted distributions of Linux.
I've used multiple monitors under Linux since all 4 digits in the year were different from now, and you have too. Clearly, it was working well enough.
Re:Issues I've had. (Score:2, Insightful)
But you've gone and done so, conveniently ignored the rest of my points, and made it the entire base of your argument. I guess I should be grateful you didn't merely write me off as a cretin based on the two grammatical errors I made in the post.
Before you humbly suggest one is "doing it wrong", why don't you try dual-head in another OS? You'll see it's impossible to "do it wrong".
Now, back to Linux.
You're prepared to accept all these things from your Daily Desktop. I hope I won't sound too much like a zealot for saying this, but if that is your experience of Linux sir, then I humbly submit that you are doing it wrong.