Big Desktop

Ok, so I have been working on this for a few hours and I'm making some progress. Basically what I have been up to is setting up my second LCD monitor and configuring Xorg to work correctly with both monitors. You will be happy to know that it is infact working. There are a few minor problems however.

How I got it to work:

Well, it wasn't too much trouble using fglrxconfig. Here is what I did:

- Ran fglrxconfig.

- Tried to startx.

- Encountered the error "(EE) No Devices Detected.

After that I was a little stumped, so I did what any techie would do who was havin a little trouble. I googled it! This is what I came up with. This goes into detail about the problem, although it didn't leave me with a good fix. (No screens found was the "sub-error" I got).

What I ended up doing was something that I tried a long time ago that worked under 1 monitor when I was trying to get DRI to work. While it gave me that error it also gave me a warning mentioning PCI 01:00:00. I did not have a clue what this is and still don't, but when I comment out the line that contains this in the xorg.conf file it works.

So that gave me Big Desktop, which is one desktop that is expanded over two monitors. This is really quite nice. Supposedly it is like Xinerama (which I am not really sure what it is because no site gives a clear definition. In fact all I know about xinerama is that it cannot be used with DRI which it out of the question.)

Anyway, I couldn't get KDE to work with this at first although GNOME and TWM worked fine. When I started KDE, it seemed as if it was going to work because the splash screen split the two monitors. Well after that I couldn't get the mouse to the second monitor. After reading a few websites I found out that this is just a little option in KDE that needs to be turned off. To do so:

- Right click on the desktop.

- Select configure desktop.

- Select Display from the left.

- Uncheck the box labeled "Apply settings on KDE startup."

- Click ok.

After restarting KDE I was in the good. Sounds good right.....wrong.

What I failed to mention is that fact that after getting a little frustrated not being able to get Big Desktop to work in KDE I tried to get Dual Head to work. This seems like it was a waste. You cannot move windows between desktops, but merely the mouse between desktops only. There are two different start buttons, etc, wasn't that great. So I copied the xorg.conf file that I had saved for Big Desktop back and thats when I figured out the checkbox thing.

The Problems

The problems I ran into were few and far between and I can live with them (for now anyway). The first problem is with maximizing windows, which is really the least of my worries since I don't really maximize windows all that much except movies. When I maximize a window it is maximized across the entire 2 monitors instead of inside one. Oh well watcha gonna do. Not a big deal. The only problem I am really having with this is that when I make an mplayer window full screen it maximizes to one screen (YAY!!!) but it makes the other black (BOOOO!) If it just maximized to one screen that would be amazing. Kinda scared to see what is going to happend with games.

The second and probably the worst problem is the fact that when the mouse cursor changes its icon on the monitor NOT plugged into the DVI port (lets say you select a hyperlink and the cursor turns to a pointer finger) a cursor in the duplicate location on the other monitor flickers breifly, almost like a ghost cursor on the other monitor. Now this doesn't seem that bad after reading this. Basically what it says is that a new version of the proprietary ati-drivers for linux have been released and this problem has been fixed. It is version 8.20.8 I currently have 8.14.13 as it is all Gentoo has unmasked thus far. There are actually 5 versions better than the one I have, but they are all still masked. Really wish they would hurry!

The last problem I had which I was able to correct was a problem that happened with mozilla web browser and its fonts. When I started mozilla all of the buttons and applications fonts (not the web pages) were HUGE! To fix this I:

- Clicked on the Edit menu.

- Selected Preferences.

- Changed the display resolution to 96dpi.

This fixed the problem. I then had to do the same thing for Thunderbird. I am sure I will also have to do it for Firefox soon enough (if I ever use it again. It is such a pain in the ass sometimes. The devs really need to work on these memory leaks ASAP because I feel they are going to start loosing market share if they don't, especially with google about to purchase Opera. The Firefox boom is over, and the developers at Mozilla need to start fixing bugs and stop adding features for a little while. Its time to return to the roots that made Firefox so popular in the first place, security and stability. Features are nice to, but I can live with the current ones for now if that means devs will be fixing stuff. Not to mention that anyone can write extensions :-) )