

KDE Gains “Magic Monitor” Functionality With New KScreen - glazemaster
http://www.thepowerbase.com/2012/12/kde-gains-magic-monitor-functionality-with-new-kscreen/

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haakon
This is mostly blogspam for this: <http://www.afiestas.org/screen-management-
got-magic/>

It's easy to be cynical about this, but I for one am very pleased about this
development. So sorely needed. Perhaps in a small way it can help slow down
the migration from Linux to Mac on the desktop.

~~~
idm
Actually, the OP provided some context that helped. It's been a few years
since I used Linux as a desktop - so I had forgotten all the x11 conf horrors.
I appreciated the lead-in.

~~~
haakon
I use Linux on the desktop and I haven't touched an X11 configuration file in
many years. I would have to Google for its location if I wanted to even look
at it. Stuff just works now - except we don't have intelligent multimonitor
support (until now).

~~~
dice
The GNOME 3 "Displays" app is pretty good. You can toggle mirrored, external
screen to the left or right by just dragging, etc. It isn't quite as slick as
the one shown in the video, but it's certainly functional and easy to use.

~~~
haakon
KDE has the same thing, but it's not smart at all. It will pick the wrong
resolution for the wrong screen, if I disconnect a screen the windows that
were on it become inaccessible, it never remembers my setup when I re-dock the
laptop, and so on.

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w1ntermute
I'm not sure why people are always complaining about multi-monitor handling on
Linux. It's always worked just fine for me. With an open source graphics
driver, there's RandR and various frontends for it. With any proprietary
driver, you use their own UI for it.

~~~
michael_h
People have a huge amount of trouble when using more than two monitors. I have
two video cards and three monitors and I _just want to use all of them as a
single desktop_. If I have two monitors, I can use TwinView and everything is
great. When I add that third monitor, I have to use it as a separate xscreen,
so it has it's own gnome panels and I can't drag a window over to it.

If there is a solution, it's not obvious to me.

~~~
anoother
Sounds like you're using the proprietary Nvidia driver?

Set all your screens to 'separate X screen' and then check the 'Use Xinerama'
box. You may have to set the correct screen offsets in the Nvidia control
panel (or xorg.conf) after restarting X.

I have this setup at work, and it works very nicely apart from the fact that
only one of the two GPUs seems to be capable of displaying OpenGL content when
connected in this way.

~~~
mbell
> 'Use Xinerama' box

Xinerama is old, buggy and more or less deprecated at this point. Also
compositing doesn't work with it enabled which causes other issues.

~~~
anoother
> Xinerama is old, buggy and more or less deprecated at this point

It is? What's the alternative?

~~~
mbell
Doesn't exist (yet). The intended replacement is multi-gpu support in xRandR
but that feature has been pushed back release after release of xRandR for
literally years now.

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eatporktoo
I think that "Magic Monitor" oversells this. I expected something much more...
magic...

------
lewisreynolds
If this works I'll be delighted. I've got an Ubuntu installation with three
monitors and two graphics cards and I burnt untold hours of my life getting
them all to work. Then an upgrade came along and broke them for good.

Of all the things that could be improved[1] on linux this would be my number
one preference. Screen real estate is critical for development work and I have
practically been driven back to Windows or Mac.

[1] A flash player that doesn't tint everything blue would also be welcome.

~~~
CasimirCelerity
An fyi, the latest nvidia drivers fix the blue man bug. The bug was never on
their end but rather adobe's, but the new drivers have a hack since adobe
never got around to fixing it.

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foolano
This is great news.

I've been using a patch that I made to address this annoying issue in KDE for
a year now:

<https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/103356/>

My patch was more of a hack than anything else but it did its job. I'm happy
though that I won't need to patch every new KDE version any longer :)

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mistercow
This is definitely a step forward but my biggest annoyance with Linux and
external monitors is handling CRTs that (apparently) send incomplete EDID
information. With literally every CRT monitor I've used with Linux, the
highest resolution option I've seen in the default popup is 1024x768, with the
maximum refresh rate being the headache-inducing 60 Hz, regardless of the
monitor's actual capability.

At least more recently I've been able to get xrandr to work so that I can add
other resolutions myself, and then I can put them in a script to run on boot,
but holy _crap_ is that annoying. Windows and Mac OS X have no problem
detecting what these displays support, but X has been dropping the ball on
this for years.

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frozenport
aerosnap is a feature I sorely miss on Linux. I have been able to recreate its
functionality for a single screen, but I have been unable to make it work
correctly for a dual screen setup.

It seems that have multiple screens in Linux creates a drawing canvas that is
rectangular in shape and it is not clear how to find out the more complicated
2 rectangle shape.

I would like to see this issue addressed.

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ayi
what a magic in 2012. i'm impressed. </sarcasm>

~~~
lewisreynolds
Sure it's tardy, but it's also _really_ useful, and it's nice to see Linux
continuing to improve, no matter how slowly.

This isn't something that looks like magic, it's just something that will make
users more productive and less stressed. That's the kind of advance we need
more of.

~~~
kh_hk

      >> Sure it's tardy, but it's also really useful, and it's nice to see 
      >> Linux continuing to improve, no matter how slowly.
    

Not to be the nitpicker here, but this is hardly a Linux issue, mostly about
implementation in different desktop environments (GNOME, Unity, KDE, ...).

Everything is already on sysfs and randr. It's up to environments to adapt
these changes. Which is great, because each of them can implement the behavior
in the way that makes most sense for their users.

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aroman
This looks great! I've come to really rely on the "closed clamshell mode" that
was shown off last in the video -- Macs have had this for quite a while now.
But it's always really great to see some work being done in this field. Kudos
to the developers and the sponsors!

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BinaryAcid
Exactly why I stopped using Linux ten years ago.

~~~
kh_hk
You stopped using Linux ten years ago because of VGA output handling?

~~~
pyre
More like:

 _grumble_ _grumble_ I hate Linux. <anecdote about a poor user experience>. No
one at all should ever use Linux for any reason whatsoever!

