2 How to Dual Monitors

Few weeks ago I became owner of new 22 inch monitor Samsung SyncMaster 225BW. I has plan to sell my old 19 inch HP1905, but today i decide to try dual monitor setup on my desktop PC. I’ve spent about 3 hours to get everything work and now I’m fully confident that two monitors are better than one.

There is a lot of guides and a few ways how-to configure multi monitor systems under Linux. Most of time i have try follow guides to get my system working, but reading documentation is always better ;-). Below you can find some tips about dual monitor setup. This post is not complete HOWTO, but maybe you can find some answers.


There is few ways to configure multi monitor systems and i have choose twinview, because that option is native feature of Nvidia drivers.Next you need comment out option Virtual under SubSection Display. That option respond for size of virtual desktop. Also you need add option “Viewport 0 0″ under same SubSection.

Both monitors connected to one video card GeForce 6600GT. SyncMaster connected with DVI and HP with VGA. System is Ubuntu 7.04 Beta, but all options will be valid on mostly all other systems.

First, as usual before any changes, you need backup current xorg.conf. Next open config in favourite editor, and add following lines under section Device:

Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP, CRT"
Option "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP, CRT"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "DFP LeftOf CRT"
Option "NoPowerConnectorCheck"
Option "UseEdidFreqs" "1"
Option "Metamodes" "CRT-0: 1280x1024, DFP-0: 1680x1050"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "31-82"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "56-76"

Here you can find complete description of used options. A lot of time spent to find how-to change order of displays (by default VGA display inits first). If that is OK for you, remove option TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder from config.

And a last change is under Section ServerLayout. Add following params:



Screen 0 "Default Screen" 0 0

Option "Xinerama" "Off"



Thats all. Save modified config, press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart X server and enjoy your new desktop ;-) Feel free to ask any questions about configuration above. I will try to help you.

Here you can download my working xorg.conf

Source : Zulu