gnome-display-properties cannot put monitors beside each other, no other tool to do this available to users

[Mike MacCana]

Binary package hint: gnome-control-center

gnome-display-properties in Hardy does not have a user interface to configure monitor spanning, only rotation.

Having spoken to Bryce Harrington, the 'Screens and Graphics' tool which did this in earlier Ubuntu releases will no longer be available to users except when X doesn't start.

Ie, Hardy no longer has a user accessable tool to set up multihead.

Could multihead be added to Screens and Graphics?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

did you try the new hardy capplet? doesn't xrandr allow to configure dual screens?

[Mike MacCana (lovekudu)]

Sebastian: yes! The new hardy capplet IS gnome-display-properties! As mentioned, that app does not have a user interface to configure monitor spanning, only rotation.

This is a regression bug, not a wishlist item.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the previous version of the capplet didn't allow to do that neither, that's a wishlist

[Mike MacCana (lovekudu)]

I'm aware that 'Screen Resolution' has never done this. However Hardy will not have the 'Screens and Graphics' available to users, where this functionality was set up, as 'Screen Resolution' replaces it and according to Bryce the older tool will not appear in the menus.

Ie. Hardy no longer has a user accessable tool to set up multihead, which is a regression. A tool is being replaced by another tool which does not entirely work as a substitute, and functionality is being lost, hence non wishlist.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

displayconfig-gtk is still available and though what you say is true that doesn't make it being a gnome-control-center bug

[Mike MacCana (lovekudu)]

> displayconfig-gtk is still available

According to Bryce, displayconfig-gtk will be removed from the menu by the time Hardy is final. Hence filing this report, in order to ensure there is still a way for users to set up multihead.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you should bring that to the xorg team rather

[Mike MacCana (lovekudu)]

Bryce isa member of the xorg team, and I am bring the issue to his attention
by raising this bug to add the missing functionality to the randr based
tool, which Bryce maintains. Can you please just let me do that?

Mike

On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> wrote:

> you should bring that to the xorg team rather
>
> --
> gnome-display-properties cannot put monitors beside each other, no other
> tool to do this available to users
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/201593
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

assigning the bug to him then

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

I had hoped to spend time implementing this for Hardy, but bugs have taken precedence. I would be willing to continue with implementation of it, but since it's a new feature am doubtful it would be accepted. If I have time maybe I'll put it in my ppa.

displayconfig-gtk is still available to users, just not from the default menu. You can call it from the command line or add it via the menu editor, however it has never allowed multi-screen configuration with Xrandr-enabled drivers anyway. For Xrandr-enabled drivers users have always had to manually configure xorg.conf, and unless I get time or unless someone blesses me with a patch, this is unlikely to change for Hardy.

[Nicolò Chieffo (yelo3)]

A "theater" option would also be useful: "theater" would bring to the selected video output, only movies and games in full-screen mode.

[Simon Woolf (semw)]

Without wishing to sound obnoxious, or ungrateful for the excellent work the Bryce Harrington and others are doing in this area; is it really the case that the latest version of the most popular Linux distribution on the planet is shipping with no way to graphically enable multiple monitors (for xrandr-enabled drivers)?

Surely even an applet with one large button that says "Enable all monitors!" which runs "xrandr --auto" (and maybe another button to switch between --left-of and --right-of options in case the autoconfigure picks the wrong one), as crude as it would be, would be vastly better than nothing!

Not that I'm saying I disagree with the decision to get rid of displayconfig-gtk. I realise that one data point proves nothing, but the only thing I've ever had it do is trash xorg.conf, requiring a "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg" before X would work at all. Goodness knows what people uncomfortable with the command line do; presumably, go back to Windows (which has had seamless on-the-fly dual monitor configuration since Windows **98**...).

NVidia users at least have a graphical configuration utility which, as I understand it, works pretty well. But ATI users like myself (not to mention Intel, SiS etc. users) are currently rather poorly served. (I realise the radeon binary drivers come with an aticonfig utility that you can use to get dual screens; I have tried it, and it was not a pleasant experience (many graphical glitches combined with frequent X crashes)).

Dual screens are a pretty mainstream option these days. Considering how hard it has traditionally been to configure dual monitors on Linux, it seems a criminal shame to not take advantage of how easy it now is with Xorg 7.3 and xrandr 1.2, to finally give Ubuntu users proper, working graphical configuration of dual monitors.

[Simon Woolf (semw)]

Apologies: I retract part of my post, to the extent that I've just tried gnome-display-properties again, and this time, it *was* possible to enable both monitors (i.e. giving dual screens). Last time I tried this a week or two ago, enabling the second monitor disabled the first; so I assume the tool was updated since then (presumably by Bryce Harrington -- thanks!).

It still put them the wrong way round, and there being no way to specify which way round they should go graphically, I still had to use the command line tool to specify --left-of. I remain hopeful that despite what Bryce wrote here last month, a simple drop-down menu to specify 'left' or 'right' might be slipped in before Hardy gets released...?

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

gnome-display-properties in Hardy final allows you to drag monitors around to specify the desired dual-head position, so you can now indicate which monitor should be on the left and which one on the right.

It didn't appear to work for me, though, with Intel i965, although I can enable dual-head with xrandr: I saw both monitors, dragged one to the left, and clicked Apply. My desktop size didn't change, and gnome-display-properties showed monitors at the same spot again, and then gave me 15 seconds to confirm or undo the change that it failed to actually make. I'm not quite sure how I should debug that problem, nor whether it belongs here and not in a separate bug report.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

FWIW my problem with g-d-p was that it wasn't enough to drag the laptop screen to the side of the external screen. Apparently I had to explicitly click on the external screen, and then change the resolution from "Off" to something sane. I wish g-d-p automatically chose the preferred resolution when you indicate you want an extended desktop by dragging the monitors around.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Dual head configuration was enabled in gnome-control-center (1:2.22.1-0ubuntu2).

There is still an issue where Virtual size must be specified in xorg.conf, but that's an xorg bug, not gnome-control-center.

Marius, regarding your need to explicitly turn on the external monitor, I've not reproduced that behavior myself so it sounds like a separate bug, not particular to dual-head configs; please file a new bug with additional information if you think it needs further investigation.

[Murray Cumming (murrayc)]

This works for me on Intrepid, for the first time, with Intel graphics on an X61 and an external monitor.