Multiple Monitor Configuration

[jwhitworth]

Hello all, I'm getting ready to start a fairly massive build that's going to utilize three to four monitors and I'm wanting to get my "ducks in a row" if you will, before I run into issues later whenever I'm putting everything together. So my question is this, and it may be a fairly simple one to answer as I haven't played with display settings in Debian before (mainly used it as a server os and toyed with it in an administration class so the majority of my experience has been using the terminal), but what will I need to do to get my multiple monitor configuration to function properly? The card I will be using is a Radeon hd6770 chipset...I'm assuming there will be files which need edited etc.?

[confuseling]

There might be special methods applicable to Radeons, you'd have to ask someone else about that...

As far as I know the two 'standard' ways of doing it in Linux are xrandr and xinerama.

xrandr is newer and preferred.

As long as the system isn't changing monitor configurations while running, it should be pretty straightforward to work out an xrandr statement that sets the screens up as you want them, and put it in a script read on login.

[jwhitworth]

There might be special methods applicable to Radeons, you'd have to ask someone else about that...

As far as I know the two 'standard' ways of doing it in Linux are xrandr and xinerama.

xrandr is newer and preferred.

As long as the system isn't changing monitor configurations while running, it should be pretty straightforward to work out an xrandr statement that sets the screens up as you want them, and put it in a script read on login.

Thanks for the reply! I'll do some research on xrandr and post my findings in case anyone else stumbles across this thread. I'll also start a build thread once everything gets here. Should be a pretty sweat setup

[jwhitworth]

After doing some digging i ran across this site http://www.v13.gr/blog/?p=94 that goes over configuring multiple monitors using a radeon card. Personally I don't mind configuring things this way if the payoff means multiple monitors with a radeon chipset. I'm thinking about getting into clustered gpu programming and radeon cards are suppose to be better in this area. Not dogging nvida by no means, they make good products as well. Just depends on what your doing, and my use isn't exactly conventional

[confuseling]

I'm not saying that information is wrong, but be aware that things seem to have changed rapidly, and a lot of guides are superfluous now at least for certain configurations.

I spent probably three hours banging my head against the proverbial brick wall trying various different xorg.confs before I realised I didn't need any of it, and could set the whole thing up perfectly (different workspaces dynamically assigned to each screen, dragging programs from one to the other) with a single xrandr statement.

Code: Select all

xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1680x1050 --pos 0x0 --output LVDS1 --mode 1280x800 --pos 0x1050


xrandr -q should give you a list of recognised modes and outputs.

[sgcb]

After doing some digging i ran across this site http://www.v13.gr/blog/?p=94 that goes over configuring multiple monitors using a radeon card.

This is how I do it as well. Essentially it accomplishes the same thing as issuing a custom xrandr command (monitor options are fed to xrandr anyway) IMO this way is cleaner even though xorg.conf is supposedly being phased out. Modes are automatically set to display's preferred mode (indicated by '+' in xrandr output)

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
   Identifier   "ATI Radeon HD 4850"
   Driver      "radeon"
   Option      "Monitor-DVI-0"      "dvi-0"
   Option      "Monitor-DVI-1"      "dvi-1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
   Identifier   "Screen0"
   Monitor      "dvi-0"
   Device      "ATI Radeon HD 4850"
   SubSection "Display"
      Virtual   4096 4096
   EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "dvi-0"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
   Identifier   "dvi-1"
   Option      "RightOf"   "dvi-0"
EndSection