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

June 22, 2008 12:23 AM

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!

posted by SlyBevel to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

What do you mean by "functional"?

Being used?

One desktop spread across all three?
posted by pharm at 3:29 AM on June 22, 2008

Have you considered looking here or asking here?
posted by Mike1024 at 5:34 AM on June 22, 2008

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.
posted by CautionToTheWind at 5:56 AM on June 22, 2008

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.
posted by onedarkride at 6:25 AM on June 22, 2008

You should look into RandR, which is supported by the newest Radeon drivers and vastly simplifies multi-head configurations.
posted by goingonit at 7:47 AM on June 22, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for the answers so far.

I'll be working in this salt mine more tonight, so I'll report back my progress.
posted by SlyBevel at 7:59 AM on June 22, 2008

SlyBevel,

Thanks! I'd like to know how to do this too.
posted by lukemeister at 9:04 AM on June 22, 2008

Response by poster: 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.
posted by SlyBevel at 12:44 PM on June 24, 2008

Response by poster: Right, so I didn't update here for a long time.

That's because it didn't work out.

Looks like if you want to use more than two monitors, you're still stuck with either Windows or Mac.

I think we've all learned a very important lesson today. Please don't ask me what it is.

I really, really want to make my primary system a *Nix one, but that just doesn't work for me until I can have lots of desktop space across 3+ monitors.
posted by SlyBevel at 8:46 AM on January 15, 2009