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KDE Multi-Monitor Control Getting An Overhaul

Posted by Unknown on from the the-gnus-smiled-upon-us-this-day dept.

Multi-monitor support on Free systems has always been a pain (even after RANDR made it a lot less of a pain). GNOME2 had a great feature: you only had to configure a given pair of displays once and it would do-the-right-thing and remember their configuration. But if you wanted to mirror displays of different resolutions, you were out of luck. KDE handled the latter case, but infuriatingly enough doesn't remember or restore configurations like GNOME2 did, and worse yet requires manual intervention before disconnecting a display. But, now that's all changing: "As some of you might have noticed, display management in KDE is not really something we could be proud of. It does not work as expected, it lacks some features and it’s not really maintained. Time to change it, don’t you think? ... Alex has written the libkscreen library that provides information about available/connected/enabled outputs and notifications about their changes. He also intends to write a KDED daemon that would listen for these events and depending on connected monitors (every monitor can be uniquely identified by it’s EDID) it would load specific configuration. For example, docking your notebook into a docking station at work would automatically turn on a second monitor and place it left of the notebook screen (or whatever you configure the first time you do it). Undocking the notebook and connecting a data projector in a meeting room would automatically set clone mode etc. etc." Additionally, the dock applet and monitor configuration UI have been overhauled allowing for quickly setting common configurations ("extend display to the {right,left,top,bottom}" / "clone") directly from the desktop, and direct manipulation of the monitor positions if you do end up needing to use the configuration program (article has a video and screenshots).

10 of 144 comments (clear)

  1. In Other News by sexconker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In other news, readers demand to know when Slashdot is getting getting an editor.

  2. But this is Linux by CubicleZombie · · Score: 5, Funny

    You're supposed to know how to hack your xconfig with vi. Setting up two displays is supposed to hurt.

    --
    :wq
  3. Win 7 by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And here Windows 7 handles five monitors using three different resolutions flawlessly. Thanks to Ultramon, they line up seamlessly in spite of also being different sizes and being at different physical elevations. It's one of the more major things that has kept me on Windows - I look forward to Linux being able to do the same.

    1. Re:Win 7 by checho4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It doesn't matter what had it first. I just want to use whatever currently has it best.

    2. Re:Win 7 by houghi · · Score: 4, Informative

      XFCE user here. 3 different monitors of different sizes. 2 different video cards. No Xinerama and no seperate X screens, so I can switch workspaces on the other screens individually. Others who would like Xinerama can have that as well. I have connected 4 monitors as well. I can line them up any way I like. e.g. with 4, ---, L, +, T, reversed T. Space in between or connected.
      The limit in screens is pure hardware. Adding cards would mean the ability to adding monitors.
      I will soon be adding a 4th monitor and am looking at adding another video card and 2 more monitors.

      Yep, it does not work in KDE or in GNOME how _I_ want it to run in the 5 minutes I tried, because it seems that they both handle things as one big screen (in any order) and I want my separate X sessions. Otherwise that would be working too.
      Screen-shot from an older setup. The image is from 2006. Two identical screens there. http://houghi.org/shots/dualscreen.jpg

      I have been doing multiple screens since around 1998. All with GUI software to make it easy for me and no manual editing of xorg.conf. All in Linux.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    3. Re:Win 7 by TemporalBeing · · Score: 4, Interesting

      According to the OP, it has multi-monitor support, but things like actually remembering the configuration you apply is inexplicably beyond its capabilities.

      It remembers the configuration until you change the configuration. That is, with a desktop where you have several monitors connected all the time it won't be an issue. But with a laptop where you may have an external monitor part of the time then it is an issue whenever you switch between laptop only mode, and laptop plus external monitor mode. What's most annoying is when you have the external display as the primary; when you disconnect it the multi-monitor dialog prompting on to reconfigure shows up on the external monitor, not the only remaining monitor - so you're kind of screwed. Currently I make it a point to reconfigure to clone mode before undocking my laptop.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    4. Re:Win 7 by washu_k · · Score: 4, Informative

      Then again, DOS might be the very first use...

      DOS did have multi monitor support from day 1, but not in the way we think of it today. You could combine a CGA card (or later EGA, VGA, etc) with an MDA (monochrome, text only) card. The idea was to use the MDA for high resolution (at the time) text and the CGA for low res graphics. Software had to be specifically written for it, but it was possible. Later, some DOS debuggers could use the MDA as a debug output separate from the main screen.

  4. Re:Just Free Systems by SJHillman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Windows XP did multi-monitors fairly well. Windows 7 handles it excellently. I have five monitors and when replacing one of the video cards, I changed which monitors were plugged into which card. As soon as Windows 7 booted, it automatically corrected for switching the cables around so that the monitors were all exactly as they were when I powered down the system in spite of every monitor being plugged into a different card and port.

    Not to say Win7 isn't lacking some features, but nothing free or cheap software like Ultramon doesn't fix (IE: fine-tuning relative positions, multi-monitor wallpaper, taskbar across all monitors), but the essential parts of multi-monitors are handled very well.

  5. Re:Vanilla version please.... by serviscope_minor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd like to see more vanilla versions of this software.

    Well sure.

    Here's the protocol extension: http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.5/doc/randrproto/randrproto.txt

    Here's the xlib API:
    http://xcb.freedesktop.org/manual/group__XCB__RandR__API.html

    Here's the command line tool:
    http://linux.die.net/man/1/xrandr

    And here are a bunch of GUI wrappers:
    http://christian.amsuess.com/tools/arandr/
    http://wiki.lxde.org/en/LXRandR

    Which would you like?

    Open Source Software has become almost as bad as the commercial counter parts in wanting to wrap everything up as one big GUI package. I don't want a bunch of bologna to download and run to configure dual monitors if I want to use a very lightweight window manager, or setup an embedded solution such as a kiosk.

    Some times yes, but this isn't one of those cases. It's one of the nice really well designed parts, and not only that but any of those tools will work with any system. They modify the monitor layout, X sends a RANDR XEvent to the window manager and everything just works.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  6. Re:Vanilla version please.... by drainbramage · · Score: 4, Funny

    XRANDR. It's all you need -- a daemon watching EDIDs and speaking XRANDR.
    And an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.
    Ah, amongst the things you need.....

    --
    No brain, no pain.