# Nvidia/Ati dual-head standard

## bushwakko

I'm not sure where to post this, but anyway, I think it's a little stupid that there doesn't seem to be any standard method of implementing dual head configurations in Linux/X. 

Ati has a confusing setup that makes you chose between big desktop, clone mode and dual head. In big desktop there is one driver which is dragged over two monitors, however both needs to be the same resolution, which makes tv-out impractical. Dual head allows two desktops but does not allow you to drag windows between the two monitors which makes it very impractical too. There is also the problem with the implementation of XV and Opengl on them.

With Nvidia there is not even a configure utility to set it up, and you have to do all the hard work yourself. I've never been able to get twinview to work with a monitor and tv-yet though, might be the card though.

When it comes to XVideo I've been experimenting a bit in windows and the way that it works is that it seems to use big desktop with support for different resolutions. You have the bar only on the primary screen, not stretched over both and you can drive a window from one dekstop to the next. You can start a video on both desktops (without a green/purple line) and you can drag the video over and when it appears on the other screen it is black (no overlay on that screen), but when the video is more than 50% on the other screen xv shifts to the other screen. You can't start one video on the second screen if there is video running on the other. so the hardware limitation of only one screen with xv also applies to windows, only they've made it more usable.

There should really be a gui-configurator like in display properties in windows where you can add a second screen at a later time (or when pushing a pre-set hotkey), because it probably costs more memory and/or CPU to have two monitors running, when not needed. Like you don't need the TV-running with a desktop when you are playing games.

Is there any unification-proccess going on with respect to these problems? If so what? and if not why not?  :Smile: 

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## bushwakko

bump! would be great if someone could comment on this!

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## Arainach

NVIDIA and Ati don't even unify their standards on Windows - they take two completely different approaches (In Windows, an ATI Video card is seen as two cards, and an NVIDIA card seen as one with a panel in settings to enable a dual screen), so on Linux?  Quite literally, ROFL.

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## bushwakko

hehe, ok then.

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## tomcat22

Dual-Head with Nvidia under X works fine just setting the useflag "xinerama" and adding the following in your /etc/X11/xorg.conf -> section screen:

```

Option "TwinView " "on"

Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"

Option "MetaModes"

"1280x1024,1280x1024;1280x1024,1024x768;1280x1024,NULL;

1280x1024,1280x1024+1200+0"

Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30 - 96.0"

Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "50 - 75"

Subsection "Display"

Depth       24

Modes       "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768"

EndSubsection
```

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## bushwakko

ok, does that enable you to have two screens with different resolutions? Including the TV?

but it disables opengl right?

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## tomcat22

no idea about different resolutions, but tv and opengl are working

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## infecticide

So I have already emerged my KDE packages with xinerama, what sections would one put for an ATI card?

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