Loren Bandiera’s weblog

I got my dual monitor setup working with my new Dell 2405FPW and my old Dell 2000FP. I’ve using TwinView to make it happen.

The 2405FPW is hooked up via DVI and the 2000FP is connected using VGA on my ASUS GF6600. It would be nice to have dual DVI but not for the current prices of cards that support it.

I needed to add the following to the device section of my xorg.conf:

Option     "ConnectedMonitors"          "DFP,CRT"
Option     "TwinView"                   "true"
Option     "TwinViewOrientation"        "LeftOf"
Option     "SecondMonitorHorizSync"     "UseEdidFreqs"
Option     "SecondMonitorVertRefresh"   "UseEdidFreqs"
Option     "MetaModes"                  "1600x1200 @1920x1200, 1920x1200"

Note the order you specify in ConnectedMonitors has no effect. The CRT (2000FP) always seems to be the first monitor. That’s why I set the orientation to “LeftOf”.

I use Gentoo so next I need to re-compile some software to have xinerama support. Here are the entries from my /etc/portage/package.use:

gnome-base/gdm xinerama
www-client/mozilla-firefox truetype xinerama
x11-misc/xscreensaver -kde xinerama
x11-wm/metacity xinerama

I also needed to change my gdm.conf so that the login screen is on my 2405FPW.

XineramaScreen=1

My desktop is now running at 3840×1200. It’s pretty cool. Haven’t had any problems and it’s been running stable for a week or so now.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 8th, 2005 at 9:42 am and is filed under technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.