Linux Desktop, Mixed Screen Orientations?

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hey all,

All this talk about linux in the main news forum has me inspired to put it on my desktop again after a few year hiatus.

One of a problems a few years back, and the main reason I slowly stopped using Linux on my desktop (which had been my main OS for a decade) was its lack of support for mixed screen orientations.

My setup is a P-L-P setup, (20" 1600x1200 portrait) - (30" 2560x1600 landscape) - (20" 1600x1200 portrait)

A picture is worth a thousand words, so it looks like this:

Xrandr reportedly supported it, but as I recall it was already deprecated back then, and even with my custom xorg.conf files I couldn't get it to work.

So, have things changed since then?t if I can get it to work, I'd be willing to go back.

Does anyone know if any of the current window managers can do this? Am I better off with Cinnamon, Mate, Enlightenment, XFCE or KDE for this to work?

Do drivers make a difference? I use a GeForce Titan in the rig, I'd be looking to stay with.

(I hate Ubuntu's Unity with a passion, so if that works and is my only option, I'll just stay in Windows)

Any thoughts appreciated!

--Matt

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I can happily report that this works in Cinnamon 2.0 in Mint 16!

 

[Copper0]

Just had a try in ArandR and this works fine for me. Don't know if it makes a difference but I am using Openbox on Debian

 

[Drudenhaus]

I run PLP with my monitors in Linux with no issues. I let AMD's CCC setup my xorg.conf for me otherwise getting the screen positioning correctly configured can be a pain when doing it by hand.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I run PLP with my monitors in Linux with no issues. I let AMD's CCC setup my xorg.conf for me otherwise getting the screen positioning correctly configured can be a pain when doing it by hand.

I have an Nvidia GPU, so I can't do that, but just a few years ago this was impossible. It simply would not work.

Its great that it does now!

I used one form of Linux or another as my main Desktop OS (dual booting for Games) from ~2000 until a few years ago, when I picked up my PLP monitors. Spent a few months trying to make it work, but eventually gave up, and used Linux less and less.

I'm excited to be back on Linux.

 

[Cheetoz]

I would of assumed this wouldn't work because nvidia's twinview is only for two screens (as the name implies I guess, hehe). And it would only be possible with xinerama.

But I guess opening up their drivers to support xrandr is what makes this possible now?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I would of assumed this wouldn't work because nvidia's twinview is only for two screens (as the name implies I guess, hehe). And it would only be possible with xinerama.

But I guess opening up their drivers to support xrandr is what makes this possible now?

Possibly. I have no idea.

It didn't work with noveau, but with the closed source 319 drivers, everything just worked. No tweaking xorg.conf manually or anything. Monitor setup just worked in Cinnamon 2.0 in Mint 16 just like it would have in Windows.

 

[jwcalla]

I would of assumed this wouldn't work because nvidia's twinview is only for two screens (as the name implies I guess, hehe). And it would only be possible with xinerama.

But I guess opening up their drivers to support xrandr is what makes this possible now?

TwinView is a misnomer now as starting with Kepler the drivers support up to four displays from one card.

Technically the TwinView option has been deprecated altogether and multi-display setups are now handled with MetaModes. The driver does pretty well at detecting these setups automatically.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

TwinView is a misnomer now as starting with Kepler the drivers support up to four displays from one card.

Technically the TwinView option has been deprecated altogether and multi-display setups are now handled with MetaModes. The driver does pretty well at detecting these setups automatically.

yeah, back the last time I tried it, I had no problem with getting all three of my displays to work, the problem was that no matter what I did, the system wanted them all in the same orientation.

 

[uOpt]

I used that for a long time. Good for coding on the left screen. The trick is not to use that twinview nonsense.

The thing that killed it is that more and more websites want a lot of horizontal space to display properly now. Idiots but what can you do.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I used that for a long time. Good for coding on the left screen. The trick is not to use that twinview nonsense.

The thing that killed it is that more and more websites want a lot of horizontal space to display properly now. Idiots but what can you do.

You find that 1200px of width isn't sufficient anymore?

I haven't had that problem, but I guess it depends entirely on what webpages you visit.

IMHO, since 1920 width is the defacto mid to high end standard these days, and widescreen is perfect for having multiple windows side by side, ideally if you are designing a webpage you should make it work with 1920/2px width (less a few px for window decorations)

 

[uOpt]

You find that 1200px of width isn't sufficient anymore?

Yeah. People take standard packages and add sidebars, let's say vBulletin + sidecrap. Very annoying.

Or try any car maker's side.