“When it comes to a multi-headed environment under Linux, there are two popular options for consumers – Xinerama and TwinView. TwinView was developed by NVIDIA for allowing multiple monitors to be powered by a single GPU with their array of GeForce graphics cards. On the other hand, Xinerama was originally developed by DEC under the name of PanoramiX, and was later incorporated into the X Windows System as Xinerama. With Xinerama and TwinView being two of the popular multi-headed options for Linux users, we have decided to study the frame-rate performance for both of these configurations, as well as a traditional single-head setup, under a variety of popular games.”
I’d really wish that it worked.
TwinView hasn’t worked since I upgraded from GF4-Ti4200 to GF6800. It isn’t supported by the driver.
For TV-out (watching videos from my PC on my TV) TwinView (clone mode) wins hands down.
>TwinView hasn’t worked since I upgraded from GF4-Ti4200 to GF6800. It isn’t supported by the driver. <
i run twinview with my gf6800 flawlessly
Nice, would you be so kind to post your xorg.conf on pastebin.com?
And which driver-, xorg- and kernel-version are you using?
posted it for ya, hope it helps
I suppose this is yours http://pastebin.com/539711 .
In that case, thank you very much, I’ve missed totally missed this feature
and now I have it back.
– Morten
EDIT: Currected spelling errors.
Edited 2006-02-05 15:42
yeah, that’s me and no problem, glad to help
yeah, that’s mine, and np, glad to help
edit: oops, my bad, i didn’t realize i posted this already
Edited 2006-02-05 23:05
Back when I was into heavy gaming, I had two 19″ CRTs hooked up to my X800 XT PE, and would have the game running in a window on the left, and keep all of my work/IM/IRC conversations on the right. It was sweet. 🙂
That said, I still prefer Windows’ multi-monitor stuff. Dragging the monitors around visually to set up the relative position of them is a nice feature.
An X800, that must have been a loong time ago
.
Actually, about 6 months. The X800 XT PE was competitive with everything of NVIDIA’s, and close to ATI’s top of the line, until NVIDIA came out with the 7800 GTX.
I sold that a while ago for a decent price, and then shortly thereafter sold my gaming PC to my girlfriend, minus a few higher-end parts that she didn’t need. My room is now home to two Macs and no PCs.
The irony. 😐
They’re comparing things very different I think.
AFAIK: Xinerama doesn’t support DRI, Xinerama lets have different cards, TwinView works only with nVidia cards + poprietary driver.
OffTopic: If I’m not wrong, Xinerama doesn’t work on Xorg 6.9/7.0, at least over SID or Dapper.
I run xinerama on Xorg-7.0 under Gentoo, with Nvidias drivers on a single card. Works just fine.
This is slightly offtopic, but anyways. Perhaps it’s only me being ignorant when it comes to getting all xorg.conf settings correct, but I still find dual screen stuff a bit cumbersome with X.org. Windows machines and Mac’s are still far better at this. I use a laptop and switch between using only the laptop LCD, an external LCD (screen 1) + Laptop LCD (screen 2) and the Latop LCD (1) + external projector (2). These set-ups requires me to have multiple xorg.conf files and stop all apps and restart X when I switch between them, which feels pretty medieval. Getting 3D/DVD/video overlay right is also problematic, although mergefb is making things easier. I would like to be able to switch seamlessly between these modes/files.
And I wonder how mergefb with the radeon driver would compare to ATI’s fglrx solution in a similar test?
Edited 2006-02-04 18:48
I use a laptop and switch between using only the laptop LCD, an external LCD (screen 1) + Laptop LCD (screen 2) and the Latop LCD (1) + external projector (2).
I can feel your pain on this one. Well, I don’t know if this helps, but…
In the times when I was still needing this option I used a little service which did following during booting
– run software that reported keypress on shift, ctrl
– copied appropriate xorg.conf
after booting I had three launchers with command “ssh – l root localhost cp somefile /etc/X11/” + ctrl+bckspc
Sucks,… major,… or even more? But sadly it was still better than manualy wasting time.
But, yes. Switching monitors on laptop sucks even more than it is possible. One would expect more in 2006.
While on the other hand I can’t remember when I would change setup on desktops. And all dual setups.
> after booting I had three launchers with command “ssh – l root localhost cp somefile /etc/X11/” + ctrl+bckspc
yup, and with some aliases that way can become almost tolerable.
> But, yes. Switching monitors on laptop sucks even more than it is possible. One would expect more in 2006.
Definately. While I generally like the “server” way of starting different services on Linux, I hate the fact that most server daemons just read the settings only once at startup. Having to kill X11 and all apps in that session to bring in a new screen configuration is silly.
I use a laptop and switch between using only the laptop LCD, an external LCD (screen 1) + Laptop LCD (screen 2) and the Latop LCD (1) + external projector (2). These set-ups requires me to have multiple xorg.conf files and stop all apps and restart X when I switch between them, which feels pretty medieval. Getting 3D/DVD/video overlay right is also problematic, although mergefb is making things easier. I would like to be able to switch seamlessly between these modes/files.
There are meta modes available, depending upon the driver. I know with nvidia you can have different modes set up (ie. dual monitors, single monitor) and Ctrl – Alt – +_to switch between them within X. I haven’t played with them though, as I don’t tend to need to switch on the fly.
In my case with Suse I use profiles, so at work I use a docked profile that includes dual-head, at home I’m on my default profile. Pretty seamless that way, once the xorg.conf for each profile is set initially. Switching profiles after boot does require a restart of X though.
So it’s not all bad, though I will admit there’s a bit to go before it’s Windows-easy, but something like that is where the distros should be working to differentiate themselves.
Just my 2c…
>That said, I still prefer Windows’ multi-monitor stuff. Dragging the monitors around visually to set up the relative position of them is a nice feature.
Oh, possibly for the casual user.
However, managing monitors is a great example of where a simple text file shines.
How are you going to script, version, annotate, or circulate that GUI setup amongst one or more people conveniently?
Positioning monitors visually is probably one of the better examples of a configuration task that lends itself to a GUI, however.
I’m guessing you can set it with the windows scripting language as well.
The canonical name for X is “X Window System”, not “X Windows System”. Sorry, but it’s a pet peeve.
somebody know if with free nv driver work with xineram to do dual display…
i tried but my second monitor never worked….
Does TwinView provide sufficient information for window managers to make sure, that dialogs and message boxes are not placed in the middle of two monitors?
.==================. .==================.
|##################| |##################|
|###########=======| |=======###########|
|###########=======| |=======###########|
|###########=======| |=======###########|
|###########=======| |=======###########|
|##################| |##################|
`==================’ `==================’
If it doesn’t, it is pretty useless I’d say.
so that window managers to notake measure
It works just fine. Windows pop up in the middle of one of the screens, not like in your ascii example
There are a few minor exceptions: occasionally a splash screen will appear astride the two monitors, but the app itself will be fine.
Twinview has worked out quite nicely for me for letting people watch movies while I work on the same computer.
Isn’t there Matrox with PowerDesk for Linux, that gives some DualHead? Or maybe someone forget about that
It should be noted that the functional equivalent (dualhead + hardware acceleration for both) of NVidia’s TwinView is called MergedFB on older Radeon cards which are supported by X.org/Mesa/DRI.
I have asked this question a couple of times in various forums now, and never got a decent answer, but i’m hoping the wide availability of of nVidia 6150 boards has changed this, as well as the release of nView 3.5.
What i want to do:
> Use two 15″ Dell Ultrasharp monitors on their sides (768×1024) as satellites
> With a single 20″ Dell Widescreen in the centre
> Using an MSI 6150 board with DVI, and a 7800GT with 2x DVI
> I don’t want any analogue connections, so i’m not interested in using the 6150 VGA
> It must be Dual-View (Triple-View?) in windows-speak rather than Span mode due to the disparate resolutions
Q – Can i do this in Linux with Twinview?
I hope to God i can get a definate answer this time around.
Kind regards
R3MF