Slashdot Mirror
Multiple-Display Power Tools For Linux?
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."
Use compiz and set your shortcuts in Window Management / Put. Just checked moving windows to different outputs (I use 2 displays) and it works.
I've been using multiple screens for years, though mostly under Ubuntu on nVidia cards. I can simply drag windows from one screen to another - not exactly difficult. Maximised windows will even resize themselves as my tow monitors do not have the same resolution.
Given that, if you really waanted keyboard control...
alt-space, down arrow, down arrow (to un-maximise), return
then
alt-space, down arrow, down arrow, down arrow (move)
use arrow keys to move window to wherever on your desktop you want it.
Mod me up (I prefer "informative") but you know it's true
This might be overly simplifying the matter, but Ubuntu (GNOME environment) has got multiple workspaces built in, and CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-right_arrow will throw the current window to the next workspace. Couldn't you just assign each workspace to a different monitor and be done with it?
To move a window to another monitor (not workspace) in GNOME, press alt+F7, hold shift and the direction you want to move.
Linux has many fine tiling window managers available, such as Xmonad, AwesomeWM, and StumpWM. These pieces of software deal very well with multi-monitor setups. They have support and expressive keybindings built in. They also automatically manage window size and placement, which is a great boon, especially if you have a lot of screen real estate: no more dragging windows around to see everything!
Truly, tiling window managers are screen-management power tools. I personally use Xmonad on four screens with named dynamic workspaces, which allows me to nicely label each set of windows and layout according to the content of the windows involved.
dwm had its multihead support improved back in July. Since pretty much all of dwm's window management is by keyboard, of course it has keyboard shortcuts for moving windows between monitors. So yeah, this feature exists in even one of the most minimalist window managers out there.
At my office, most of the developers have at least two monitors (1600x1200 Dell 2007FP or something like that). They're rotated 90 degrees (more vertical space for coding) and configured as a dual-monitor setup. A few developers have expanded things to 3 or 4 monitors. The machines in question sometimes have trouble booting up with two video cards (they're somewhat cheap old motherboards), but the drivers and desktop setup (Nvidia binary blobs under Ubuntu) were always pretty easy to get running and Just Worked with the nvidia config tool.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I've heard anecdotal stories that Compiz can't cross video cards.
Compiz doesn't really have the problem here. It's the driver's problem. Specifically, on certain Intel video chips, there's a limit to the size of the framebuffer you can have with DRI, which Compiz requires. 2048x2048 was the limit, which is pretty hard to fit two-three monitors into with reasonable resolution, especially with the Widescreen Monitor Proliferation we've seen in the past decade. IIRC, this has been fixed with later drivers ("shatter" fb, which does exactly what it sounds like it does, was the solution I remember hearing about), but it plagued many for a very long time.
I've been using FVWM with multiple monitors for years. xrandr has simplified things considerably. I can drag from one monitor to another with no problem. Below is my current xorg.conf (note that I am running on Fedora 10). You can use a Radeon card by changing the driver to 'radeon'. Use 'lspci' to get the appropriate BusID for your card(s). There may be simpler solutions but this has worked well for me.
And for those saying to use a different window manager please note that FVWM has not stood still but is still true to the name it had when I began using it 15 years ago: the Frugal Virtual Window manager. It is frugal with regards to RAM and CPU use. I also like it because I can edit a file (gasp) to modify the configuration. For old farts like me that's a plus. YMMV.
Section "InputDevice"
# keyboard added by rhpxl
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "DVI0"
Option "Enable" "true"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "DVI1"
Option "LeftOf" "DVI0"
Option "Enable" "true"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GT"
Driver "nv"
BusID "PCI:1:00:0"
#Option "Monitor-DVI0" "DVI1"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GT"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Virtual 3840 1200
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
EndSection
You most definitely haven't tried to setup a multiple display environment in any modern Linux...
I've been using linux for the last 10 years at home, finally ditching Windows entirely about 4 years ago (So I'm pretty decent at setting up/working with Linux)... Just 2 days ago, I tried to setup a 3 monitor desktop at work (2 Nvidia cards and 1 Intel card), and gave up after 10 hours of trying to get it work. I got X using them as different sessions (One instance of Gnome per monitor), but couldn't get a unified window manager between them... And I tried 2 different distributions (Ubuntu and Fedora)
One thing Windows does REALLY well right now, is multiple monitors. What you said, is pure anti-MS hatred. There's a lot that I don't think Windows does well, and a lot that I think Linux does REALLY well, but multiple monitors clearly isn't one...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
Did you seriously not expect to get called out on that?
http://imgur.com/RSTFx
How the hell does this sort of crap keep getting modded informative?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I'm running three monitors on Windows XP, with a Radeon x1650 driving two and a Geforce 7600 running the other one. It was literally a matter of installing the ATI drivers, then the nVidia drivers, then checking a couple checkboxes. Both Catalyst and Nvidia control panel work fine.
Maybe I happened to pick a couple cards that don't interfere with each other?
Did everybody miss the line in TFA where he said:
Still stuck on FVWM?
Windows 3.1 had pretty miserable multi screen support too. That's why everyone dumped it like a leaking baby diaper.
Ubuntu, and KDE both handle multiple monitors very well.
Why would the OP mention Windows 7 in the same post where he whines about FVWM?
Level playing field much?
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Multiple graphics cards? That's a very exotic multiple-display configuration these days now that dual-head graphics cards are the standard. So if you act like your experience with your exotic setup is typical, you can expect shocked reactions from the 99% of multi-display users currently using a single dual-head graphics card with no problems or setup difficulty.
The most common problem is having to use nvidia's setup tool instead of the standard 'display preferences' control panel because nvidia is taking forever to implement xrandr 1.3. But on the upside, they have their own (proprietary) solution to support hardware acceleration with a Xinerama setup (with similar cards).
Xinerama keeps things aware of monitor boundaries (at least, I'm using multiple monitors with Xinerama right now, and things work properly).
This. Welcome to the ugly side of proprietary drivers. nVidia wrote their driver in a really misbehaving way, they circumvent most of the X architecture. Don't expect it to play nice with... anything (does it even support XRANDR?) Long story short, you can use the nVidia card alone, and then use their tools to set up the dual head display on it, or you can use the Intel card alone and expect all your built-in tools to play fine. Never the twain shall meet. The fact that you got even independent X sessions working on it I find nothing short of miraculous (I would be curious to see glxinfo on each display).
If we're talking nVidia hardware, then when you use a combination of nVidia's TwinView with x.orgs' Xinerama for three or more screens, then there are issues with windows maximising across two screens when it should only be on one.
If you're using just Xinerama or Twinview then screen boundaries are respected.
There's a "fake xinerama" patch available though that works around the TwinView with Xinerama problem.
What kind of crack are you on! Windows will take just about any piece of shit video card you have and multi head it without problems.
Plug it in, install drivers, "extend desktop to this monitor"
It's been this easy for a good 10 years now.
According to that article heterogeneous multi-adapter will work in Vista/W7 if you use XPDM drivers instead of WDDM drivers.
At least that's my understanding of this:
A user could force the installation of a XPDM driver for each of these devices, and therefore get heterogeneous multi-adapter multi-monitor to work as in Windows XP.