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New KScreen Supplies Some Magic For Multi-Monitor Linux Set-Ups
An anonymous reader points out developer Àlex Fiestas's work on multiple monitor configuration for Linux. In particular, the screen manager that he and Dan Vrátil are working on — KScreen — gives KDE users a utility "making the configuration of monitors either auto-magical or super simple." This is one thing that's certainly gotten much better in recent years for Linux GUI users in general, but the video in the linked post makes me a little envious — another good reason to swap desktops once in a while.
The first time I ran X on my home computer, I had to call Diamond to get the timings for my SpeedStar card so I could calculate the correct values to put in my xconfig file. And the person who answered the phone knew exactly what I needed, flipped thru a binder, and read off the numbers.
Until it's put into a distro.
Jesus, stop acting like a jackass.
A suggestion to the developers. Please allow for degenerate cases. I deal with a set of old, specialized, practically irreplaceable displays that cannot produce DPMS data. In the past I've suffered with embedded displays that produce completely inaccurate DPMS data.
Allow the operator a means to manually override whatever display parameters your software obtains (probably via xrandr) from the operating system. The display parameters are often bogus and must be corrected.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Basically..
* it will remember what you configuration was used with that monitor
* when you close your laptop it will go to the native resolution of the attached screen
I don't even know how new those are, but I've never personally used (or noticed) either of them before...
Everything else, I've been using succesfully since I started using laptops on both Windows and Linux.
Actually, no, you could not.
You didn't (and still don't) even have a separation between window manager and applications, so hung application produces pretty patterns on the screen when you try to drag your window, if you can even drag it at all. You didn't (and still don't) have usable multiple-desktop or multiple-viewports support, so changes in resolution only affect one giant constantly-displayed area, with all windows mapped to it. You can't allocate a monitor connected to one host to become a part of the environment for other hosts, or combine multiple hosts with their monitors to show a single desktop, with applications spanning all of them.
So you are comparing the ability to change the resolution on the fly without restarting applications (what Windows had before Linux got it in 2001, and became part of mainstream in 2007) against actual usable management of resolutions on multiple screens, some virtual, some networked. And no, your stupid Terminal Services don't count.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
so hung application produces pretty patterns on the screen when you try to drag your window, if you can even drag it at all.
This shows that people like you have last used Windows back in the XP or even ME days. Get with the times instead of wallowing in outdated criticisms.
You can't allocate a monitor connected to one host to become a part of the environment for other hosts, or combine multiple hosts with their monitors to show a single desktop, with applications spanning all of them.
This is soooooo useful to so many desktop users compared to the use case of extending desktop to another monitor on the desk without fiddling with multiple config files and utilities. *snicker*
And no, your stupid Terminal Services don't count.
Yes, lets discount actual working remote desktop over even dialup,and lets trumpet outdated technology requiring a LAN.
Which one of those lets me start an application on one machine and then continue using it on another machine like Windows has been able to do for well over a decade?
With all the praise that X gets for its network transparency, it's mostly unusable except on the highest bandwidth links because its synchronous calls and uber-chattiness make it unusable without adding a wrapper around it, like NX does. That's the irony. Pretty much any protocol can be called "network transparent" as long as that includes writing a suitably complicated wrapper for it. In this regard, X is no more network transparent than any other display technology.
This shows that people like you have last used Windows back in the XP or even ME days. Get with the times instead of wallowing in outdated criticisms.
Now the effect is masked by the speed of processors and programmers carefully starting tens of threads for their UI, but it's still there (window won't even move if anything gets blocked). Meanwhile, X applications may run on some remote m68k, and won't slow down the rest of UI.
This is soooooo useful to so many desktop users
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
compared to the use case of extending desktop to another monitor on the desk without fiddling with multiple config files and utilities. *snicker*
Do you even understand what this is about? All this IS IMPLEMENTED in nice UI, the article is about a new KDE utility for it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The other AC here is likely right. This possibly isn't an issue with KDE but in fact some annoyance with NVIDIA's twinview which actually does assume you only ever have two monitors max.
The article says: "This is one thing that's certainly gotten much better in recent years for Linux GUI users in general..." -- I cannot agree. While connecting a beamer to a notebook is simpler today, support for multiple monitors (of a desktop machine) is far from where it was some years ago. For years I had been able to disable the (default) Xinerama options, so I could have two separate instances of (e.g. KDE 3) running on both screens. That allowed me for example to stay on virtual desktop 1 on the left monitor and cycle through my virtual desktops on the right monitor. (Imagine lots of data sources on the right screen and some application I use to combine stuff on the left monitor; I want to switch desktops without the left monitor changing its content). This is still possible today, but it's a lot harder and depends on what kind of graphics card you use. Granted, my old way required knowledge of the xorg.conf syntax, but once it was finished it gave me maximum configurability. Last time I checked, KDE 4 wasn't able to start two instances on :0.0 and :0.1 properly which is why I'm still using KDE 3 (a.k.a. "Trinity" today).
Hans-Georg
Not to bait you but you didn't actually debunk his post, are there any Win users here that use multiple monitors to give us a comparison?
No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Here's a little glimpse:
- Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
- Windows leaves much of the multi-monitor support to the drivers. if you have several display adapters they better work well together at the driver level or you won't get multi-monitor. At work we tried adding a second monitor to a Windows system (2008 Server I think) but the driver for the second card would only work with other drivers that had WDM support; which the main card did not.
- As of WinXP SP3 Windows does provide a nice built-in utility for manipulating mutli-monitor support when it is available, but it's very limited. Usually you'll get more functionality out of the driver tools (e.g. nVidia's ControlPanel) that will let you do a bit more. In no cases do any of those tools provide the flexibility of what Linux provides.
This is true even of Windows 7; and given the lack of differences for Win8 I would assume so there to - those from what I have seen, Windows 8 will put the Metro interface on one monitor and the Desktop interface on a second monitor by default; so you're dual-head display is now essentially a single head display for with two different environments on each monitor. Might be the only way to use Windows 8 without getting rid of Metro.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
So you have dual video cards and quad monitors, but you can't spare the resources for KDE? OK.
In my experience the RAM usage difference between Gnome, XFCE and KDE isn't very big.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
It is one of the features that I constantly have to wrestle with on Linux (which I use as my main OS), there is currently no real multi-screen support in a major distro and what support there is breaks regularly during updates. (This includes things like full screen flash, changing settings without rebooting, etc). I hope this will work with nvidia drivers, but from past experience I doubt it.
null
I haven't used it myself, but maybe this does what you want?
http://xpra.org/
Or is this the same as the XRDP situation? Although, I don't really understand what you mean by "simply move it to another server" in the Windows context.
Can you really start an executable on one machine and move the running executable to another machine? Your comment further up merely says:
To me, this sounds like RDP: connect from a client machine, start an application on the server, disconnect, reconnect later from another client to continue using the application. The application itself is still running on the same server machine.
--
Promoting critical thinking since 1994.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
Given that you have _several_ X Servers for Windows (some of them free), I can't see why not. What I can see is Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint with completely broken XDMCP funcionality, and its a trending issue - that alone somewhat reflects the usage that kind of feature has nowadays. And the problems usually don't end with XDMCP.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
I don't know what a "workstation user" is. I know a lot of "workstation users" that only use Microsoft Office and Outlook. I also know a lot of them that use Adobe Photoshop extensively, so it appears that you have problems distinguishing the forest from the trees. I myself am a "workstation user", and use both Windows and X server on Windows, and have no need whatsoever in executing remote GUI applications over X.
Do you even understand what this is about? All this IS IMPLEMENTED in nice UI, the article is about a new KDE utility for it.
And the point is that this is pretty much a standard feature of other operating systems, such as Windows. Without requiring you to use a specific WM/DE or installing a shitton of libs. It is 10 years late, and as the video shows, many laptops even assume the SO has that capability to the point of having a marked shortcut for it.
And there is nothing OSS/free in the *nix world vaguely near Terminal Services. Internally, the desktop compositing is somewhat similar to X, but works way better over slow links, with the plus of actual audio support, resource sharing (disks and printers), and a _usable_ clipboard (still waiting on that on *nix). The case usage of TS is somewhat different from remote GUI applications, but from what I see on a daily basis, way more useful.
Yes, lets discount actual working remote desktop over even dialup,and lets trumpet outdated technology requiring a LAN
What the fuck? Come on now, X windows was built for remote connections. That was the reason scaling the resolution was difficult to do, because it changes the whole underlying infrastructure of X.
Terminal services basically stole every concept that X had since.. like.. the 1970s. X worked extremely well over dial up and LAN, and still does today. It's still more secure than MS products, less prone to MiM attacks, and has way more capabilities. Such as displaying an application or a full desktop, where TS is desktop only.
In fact, to go further.. MS had to buy a lot of technology from Citrix to accomplish anything at all with TS.
If you want to tell people how bad X is, at least do 10 minutes of research before doing so. KDE has been superior to Windows since version 3 in every sense (assuming you were using current hardware). Windows 7 in fact was full of gadget ideas stolen from KDE and MacOS (though the selection was and is laughable and it's poorly implemented).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
No longer a Windows user...
Ah well, then I guess you are well qualified to comment then.
or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors
That's over simplifying a lot.
The monitors can be set up more or less independently. They don't need to have the same resolution, and they can be positioned arbitrarily relative to each other.
The task bar doesn't get stretched out.
There are hotkeys for moving windows between monitors.
The desktop background isn't stretched out either.
Its hardly simply a really big desktop with a few "viewports" onto it.
but applications can only min/max on one monitor
That's a feature not a bug. The desirability of the maximize button maximizing an application across multiple monitors of often different resolutions and arbitrary relative positions is pretty much nil. But if you want to stretch it across multiple monitors you can.
Windows leaves much of the multi-monitor support to the drivers.
Windows does most of the main multi-monitor functions just fine on its own. A few more esoteric functions, like being able to define rotations for the screens independently is typically offered by the drivers, and is not natively offered by windows. (And rotations might even be offered in windows 8... I'm not sure about that one offhand; although I do recall seeing something about setting the orientation.)
As of WinXP SP3 Windows does provide a nice built-in utility for manipulating mutli-monitor support when it is available...
So, uh, as of a version that is pretty much EOL, and is the oldest version you would really expect to see people actually using it already had a useful tool for managing multiple monitors? Is that the last time you used windows?
and given the lack of differences for Win8 I would assume so there to
Windows 8 adds some really nice multiple monitor improvements actually... in particular you can show taskbars on multiple displays - with a variety of options such as the ability to have an application icon appear just on the taskbar on the screen its on, or on the screen its on, plus the primary display, or on all taskbars on all displays.
Additionally you can open the start start screen on any display, and you can set independent backgrounds.
so you're dual-head display is now essentially a single head display for with two different environments on each monitor
In other words, with dual monitors you can run metro and desktop alongside eachother if you like. ...
Or classic on both monitors.
Or metro on both monitors.
Or with 3 monitors...
Or Metro on 2 monitors, classic on 1 monitor.
Or classic on 2 monitors, metro on 1.
Or metro on all 3.
Or Classic on all 3 monitor.
Sad thing is I'm not even really a microsoft cheerleader; but the amount of ignorant nonsense i read about windows on slashdot forces me to defend them.
The most common use case for me, is to have my laptop docked to a larger screen, where I have some applications running on my laptop screen, this could be a browser window on a laptop screen, e-mail client etc., and have my ssh windows open on the bigger screen, since code is more important to me, it gets the larger screen real estate. Linux, (maybe not Unity) but KDE, SUCKS MY BALLS for this
Funny that I do this same exact operation on my Linux laptop all the time with KDE. I have used this same feature on KDE since.. version 3.5 at least. It worked fine with an ATI Mobile chip, the intel chip, and now the NVidia chip. In Windows I have to use the cards driver set to make the same thing work in every case (Windows won't do this properly natively, or magically loses screen placement every few hours after coming out of a screen saver). In KDE, the control panel is all I needed with any chip set. It works every time, and remembers my configuration between boots every time. Windows on the other hand has poor behavioral issues. Un-docking for example sometimes causes a full reset. Sometimes it keeps the 2nd display when it's not attached and I can't see anything.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Actually curious, how do you remote an app in Windows at all? As far as I knew you ran it on the desktop and remoted the whole desktop...and how do you switch the app from one machine to another? I'd like to be able to do this often. If it's available in windows I've been missing out...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Wayland is one of the doomed projects that were supposed to replace X, but amounted to nothing. This shit is going on for as long as X11 existed.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
XDMCP and remote X are disabled on Ubuntu because for home users they are nothing but a potential security hole. Enabling them is trivial for those who need them.
X servers for Windows don't run Windows applications, and mostly don't run X applications, either, due to extreme ineficciency, outdated implementations, and nonexistent hardware support. Among other things, they don't support dynamic resolution changes and compositing. Apparently idiots like you believe that all X implementations are as crappy as those.
Microsoft Office is an application for making pretty documents with incoherent formatting, and using a pseudo-database with calculations, that grew into something that has more in common with absurdist art than any productive activity. People who only use it, would be better off with a tablet-keyboard combination -- too bad, one that Microsoft tried to sell is total crap, at large extent because their tablet-style UI is almost as bad on tablets as it is on desktops. If you judge workstations use by the type of users who waste computers' capability the most, you you are bound to end up with idiotic preferences -- oh wait, this is what Windows mlti-screen support is!
The rest of your response is plain false.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I'm pretty sure those that have been using *nix all this time would have dropped it if they cared that much. For many of us the value of *nix is in a GUI-less environment and seeing articles like this is just evidence of how far the open environment has come. I still use Windows on my primary desktop and am forced to use a Macbook for work but every server running every one of my products/projects is some flavor of Linux because of the stability. Now that's without a doubt a more important "feature" than some new way to manage your desktop environment, IMO.
No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Are you comparing Windows XP with a latest linux distro? Because I had problems for _years_ with X/Xorg and multiple monitors.
Not simply XP, but Vista and 7 as well. I've used all three; but I primarily use Linux. (My wife has Vista on her laptop, and I get to dabble with Win7 from time to time at work. But 90+% of my time is under KDE on Linux - Kubuntu for the time being, and Gentoo.)
For a long time you had to specifically setup your X configuration file to get it right. It was a pain to get right, but it did work very well once configured. Since Xorg 1.5 you don't have to specifically craft the X configuration file any longer, but it depends on your DE (e.g. GNOME, KDE, etc) to get the dynamic configuration working right. KDE 4.5 and later could do it; but it's only really matured in that manner with 4.8. I can't speak to GNOME as I don't touch it.
Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
None of the applications I use make sense being spread across monitors horizontally, maximized, so never needed it. Can you give me an example of such application?
Some users like to do it for video editing, or multi-screen displays. I haven't done it so I'm not familiar with the use-case so much, but I do know you can do it under Linux.
Windows system (2008 Server I think)
Pick a 2009 Linux distro, install it on a laptop, and then span the desktop to another monitor, with different resolutions. Now try see a fullscreen movie on the 2nd monitor, and tell me about it. Or boot up the SO, plug an external video device, and see how the resolution detection works.
I do it with both Gentoo and Kubuntu, no X configuration file now - though I use to on the Gentoo system. You can use Xinerama to have a seamless display between several monitors, or separate desktops on each, or one desktop with different configurations for each. Right now, I've got my Lenovo T61p running KDE 4.9 with one wallpaper on the laptop display and another on a 22" LCD monitor. Works great.
Now, I'm not saying KDE manages it perfectly yet - there's still a few bugs to work out. But the flexibility is far greater than what Windows provides.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
It does not matter. I am an engineer, and my configuration of a desktop is conducive to complex engineering/software development work, therefore my requirements are legitimate, and Windows' inability to satisfy them is a flaw. Just because there are plenty of other engineers who have never seen anything other than Windows, does not mean that they do not suffer and do inferior job, or live shorter, more miserable lives, because of the deficiency of the environment forced on them.
You're probably the most desktop-happy person I've ever come across. I know, you can't even conceive the idea that other people - equally bright or brighter than you - opt for different things, or develop in different environment, Just because you probably work surrounded by monkeys, it is naive to assume everyone that doesn't agree with you is one.
Actually it's funny that you make such a claim. Every environment I worked in where I started using Linux had people saying "Damn, how come I can't do that?". Every site has had a percentage of their technical staff switch to either Linux or MacOS over Windows. Currently, I use Redhat and Fedora, the guy next to me uses Ubuntu, the 2 people opposite of us run MacOS. The other 2 guys with Windows have already submitted requests to move to Ubuntu. Hell, I have my mom running Fedora and she loves it. She browses and uses Open Office.
The point is, that most people only know Windows. That is not the same thing as Windows being better. Average users are ignorant, and media ensures that they stay that way. You would be amazed at how much people want to learn about alternatives to Windows and how easily they can pick up KDE.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.