Comments on: Three Monitors, One Linux (I know obscenity when I hear it)

Question: Three Monitors, One Linux (I know obscenity when I hear it)

SlyBevel — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:23:40 -0800

Please help me: Make my triple monitors work in Ubuntu ----OR---- Find a distro that will gracefully handle three monitors.

Either one is fine, but this is killing me and I really need to get it done.

I'm currently running Hardy Heron. I used the open source driver for a while, but I was only able to get the two monitors on the first vid card working when I switched to the ATI driver.

I think part of the problem is that I have two cards: Radeon X1600 Pro AGP 8x, Radeon 9600 PCI. So far, Ubuntu is only using the primary card.

I've Googled extensively, and I've tried many xorg.conf tweaks, but none of them seem to get me to where I need to be, ie: Running a current distro of Linux with all three of my monitors functional.

Please help!

By: pharm

pharm — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:29:52 -0800

What do you mean by "functional"?

Being used?

One desktop spread across all three?

By: Mike1024

Mike1024 — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:34:16 -0800

Have you considered looking here or asking here?

By: CautionToTheWind

CautionToTheWind — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 05:56:35 -0800

Second results of googling "linux triple head" tell you to do it with Nvidia cards, as ATI/AMD does not support triple head. A bit more research will tell you that ATI neglected their Linux driver for a long long time and are now far behind in functionality.

By: onedarkride

onedarkride — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 06:25:21 -0800

Here. You need twinview AND xinerama. I've never done this, because the idea of doing it makes me cry.

Oh, and it'll most likely break compiz. Max texture size won't span across two cards properly.

By: goingonit

goingonit — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:47:16 -0800

You should look into RandR, which is supported by the newest Radeon drivers and vastly simplifies multi-head configurations.

By: SlyBevel

SlyBevel — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 07:59:36 -0800

Thanks for the answers so far.

I'll be working in this salt mine more tonight, so I'll report back my progress.

By: lukemeister

lukemeister — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:04:14 -0800

SlyBevel,

Thanks! I'd like to know how to do this too.

By: SlyBevel

SlyBevel — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:44:09 -0800

Just thought I'd duck in here to say that I'm still working on this, and I'll still be dropping an update here when I have something of any meaning to say.