dual monitor problem

[Vit Svarc]

I tried to run elementary os beta on industrial PC with Intel HD graphics board. It has VGA, DVI, and HDMI output, I am connected to DVI. The instalation was ok, but after reboot, elementary thinks that I 2 monitors setup and displays the screen only on the SECOND one, it means I could see only blue background without dock and top panel.
When I tried Alt-f2, I could't see the run window, but I managed to run terminal and this window appeared on my screen and with xrandr commands I managed the right setup.

Proposed solution:

- show top panel also on second screen to be able to run any application.

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

System Settings > Displays > Drag the top panel in the illustration to the display you want to be the main one > Apply

[Vit Svarc (vs-pb)]

Yeah, but you don't see any System settings, displays, etc., because you see only the screen from SECOND monitor, not from the first. And on the second screen is also no top panel.

[Ilya Gorbunov (daverk)]

I have similar problem with wingpanel. See attached screenshot

[Tomas Dostal (dostal-it)]

I have just installed elementaryOS and got to the office and run into some dual screen problems as well:

1) Dock panel - It's just on my laptop screen not on the external screen which for me IS EXPECTED BEHAVIOR, please whatever you do, make sure we can choose to have the panel just on one screen. I have had some doc panels before and some of them force the doc panel on both screens

2) Hot corners - Hot corners unfortunately "stop" working. On external screen they are not activated at all, on the laptop screen they still work, but they change to a very very small area. Therefore you need to try out and be careful where you "bump" your mouse. This gets a little tricky, as I am using setup for my screens where one is on top of the other, so when I try to bump into top-right-corner on my laptop to use hot corner, the cursor moves to the top screen. I would still like to use the hot corners though, but I understand that there is probably no logic way to solve this...

3) Gnome Do - When I summon gnome do on my laptop screen, it is aligned to the bottom of the screen with more than half of the gnome do below viewport/invisible. I think I have seen the same behavior in vanilla ubuntu 12.04 so I think its ubuntu/gnome-do issue. I remember the ubuntu 13 did not have the same problem.

4) Top panel - I am using the minimalisting Wingpanel. The panel shows only on the laptop screen but not on the extrnal screen, which I would love to have. This issue and the Dock Panel issue above can be changed by moving "active monitor" stripe in displays setting to the external screen, but then it just switches everything to the external, so same issue in the other way.

I think thats all I could think of for now. It would be really great to see some improvement in dual screen management. All linux distros are not very solid in this matter, while when I was on windows, all I had to do was plugged screen in and everything was perfect.

Otherwise, awesome job on elementary, finally PRESENTABLE linux distro :)

[Sergio Ibarra (zergioibarra)]

I had the same problem. One monitor with VGA and another with DVI. Elementary just dosent detect two monitors.

[TC (smalltimer)]

I have an external monitor connected to my laptop via hdmi. The I unplug the external display and then plugged it back in, it is not recognised at all unless I launch the system-settings plug. The transition is very unaesthetic as well because for almost 2 seconds the screen becomes completely jumbled up. Very un-elementary-like!

[Charles Williams (charlwillia6)]

I confirm this bug too. I have a 1080p ViewSonic VG2436wm-LED monitor, and a Lenovo ThinkVision monitor. The ViewSonic monitor is hooked up VGA, and the Lenovo is hooked up with a DVI adapter off a VGA cable. I cannot for the life of me get Elementary OS to work with the DVI hookup. I started with the Nouveu drivers, tried the NVIDIA 331 proprietary driver, and even tried a legacy NVIDIA driver that was suggested in some other posts when I did a search. When I go to display, the monitor is there, but if I try to activate it, the settings panel freezes and then disappears after about a minute. It simply will not use that monitor. If I switch the DVI adapter to the other monitor, it won't use that one. Seems to be a DVI issue. I have a Lenovo T430s that uses an Intel and NVIDIA chipset for the graphics.

I do not have this issue in Windows, or any other linux distribution. This seems to be a Elementary OS issue only. And unfortunately I cannot use Elementary if it does not have dual monitor support with DVI.

[Lukasz Kapiec (lkapiec)]

Hi, I have some similar issue.
I use two monitors (Laptop + external hdmi/DVI one), when I log in, (reboot/ restart) I need to set my monitors position once again, elementary os does not remember my previous monitor relative position. After reboot it backs to default settings (left: laptop monitor & right: external monitor).

[Michał Ćwikliński (mcwiklinski)]

I can confirm that - I have fanless nettop computer, and after booting LiveCD my monitor is treated as second one, so I can do nothing (because there is no second monitor).

[PALMER (forum-techfin)]

Hi,
  Elementary Freya on HP 840 G2 , same problem as lkapiec above.
The monitors (laptop screen, external DVI) relative position is not retained .

[math (mathmartre)]

My computer detects the two monitors (laptop built-in + external vga)

but only the external light up.

In the config I cannot tick "Use this display" for my built-in display.