[opensuse] Triple screen options
Hi guys, I'm Looking for your experiences using three (or possibly more) monitors under Linux? We use two to three screens at work (depending on our exact requirements). Using two screens on a dual-head card works mostly OK, at least for my legitimate work needs (some things like fullscreen mplayer don't behave so nicely, but that's not essential), but as soon as you run three or more screens and have to use two graphics cards, things get a little messy. Xinerama, for one, breaks hardware 3D, and some things behave weirdly. I am not sure if this is Xinerama's fault, or if it is a side effect from having two physical cards. I have noticed that, even if the two cards are identical the second card always performs much worse than the first one, even though the first one is driving two screens. By identical I mean an AGP and PCI that are otherwise the same (Radeon 7000 - PCI is way fast enough for this), or two PCI cards - doesn't seem to make a difference. I've looked online at cards like the Matrox G450 Quad, and wondered if anyone has experience running these under linux. How well does things like 3D and hardware overlay (as in MPlayer fullscreen with xv without trying to fullscreen over all the screens) work? Thanks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
* koffiejunkie (koffiejunkielistlurker@koffiejunkie.za.net) [20070710 15:49]:
Xinerama, for one, breaks hardware 3D, and some things behave weirdly. I am not sure if this is Xinerama's fault, or if it is a side effect from having two physical cards.
It's Open GL to blame as it can't handle more then one display. If you use NVidia cards with their proprietary driver and thus have to use NVidia's twinview, you don't have that problem as twinview will present itself as one display with huge dimensions. But even my quadcore Intel box will kind of crawl when using an OpenGL app such as bzflag.
I've looked online at cards like the Matrox G450 Quad, and wondered if anyone has experience running these under linux. How well does things like 3D and hardware overlay (as in MPlayer fullscreen with xv without trying to fullscreen over all the screens) work?
AFAIK, you need Matrox binary only driver for that card and I have no experience with that (both the quag G450 and the Matroxc driver). Philipp -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Philipp Thomas wrote:
It's Open GL to blame as it can't handle more then one display. If you use NVidia cards with their proprietary driver and thus have to use NVidia's twinview, you don't have that problem as twinview will present itself as one display with huge dimensions. But even my quadcore Intel box will kind of crawl when using an OpenGL app such as bzflag.
I'm not really concerned with games. I have only one app that uses 3D - Google Earth. If that runs smoothly (on one screen) I'd be happy. For some reason (it might be shortage of video mem, I'm not sure), it doesn't work if I maximise it on the second display. If I widen the window to extend accross both screens, it's fine until it reaches about half of the second screen, than the "earth window" goes black. What drives me more nuts are two applications that, when I maximise them, don't stay on one screen: VMware and MPlayer. Both enlarge to the size of one screen, but sit in the middle of the two. This is completely useless. I have fiddled endlessly with xorg settings and KDE's window manager settings, but all to no avail. Thanks -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 7/11/07, koffiejunkie <koffiejunkielistlurker@koffiejunkie.za.net> wrote:
Philipp Thomas wrote:
It's Open GL to blame as it can't handle more then one display. If you use NVidia cards with their proprietary driver and thus have to use NVidia's twinview, you don't have that problem as twinview will present itself as one display with huge dimensions. But even my quadcore Intel box will kind of crawl when using an OpenGL app such as bzflag.
I'm not really concerned with games. I have only one app that uses 3D - Google Earth. If that runs smoothly (on one screen) I'd be happy. For some reason (it might be shortage of video mem, I'm not sure), it doesn't work if I maximise it on the second display. If I widen the window to extend accross both screens, it's fine until it reaches about half of the second screen, than the "earth window" goes black.
What drives me more nuts are two applications that, when I maximise them, don't stay on one screen: VMware and MPlayer. Both enlarge to the size of one screen, but sit in the middle of the two. This is completely useless. I have fiddled endlessly with xorg settings and KDE's window manager settings, but all to no avail.
AFAIK - you can not have 3d accell on more than one screen, I think I read something like this on nvidia forums. Anyway, I could never make it run on both screens. VMWare is not yet xinerama-capable. According to posts on their forums, this is planned for some future release. As a workaround, use the QuickSwitch mode. For Mplayer, use -xineramascreen option. Cheers -- Svetoslav Milenov (Sunny) Even the most advanced equipment in the hands of the ignorant is just a pile of scrap. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 7/11/07, koffiejunkie <koffiejunkielistlurker@koffiejunkie.za.net> wrote:
Philipp Thomas wrote:
It's Open GL to blame as it can't handle more then one display. If you use NVidia cards with their proprietary driver and thus have to use NVidia's twinview, you don't have that problem as twinview will present itself as one display with huge dimensions. But even my quadcore Intel box will kind of crawl when using an OpenGL app such as bzflag.
I'm not really concerned with games. I have only one app that uses 3D - Google Earth. If that runs smoothly (on one screen) I'd be happy. For some reason (it might be shortage of video mem, I'm not sure), it doesn't work if I maximise it on the second display. If I widen the window to extend accross both screens, it's fine until it reaches about half of the second screen, than the "earth window" goes black.
What drives me more nuts are two applications that, when I maximise them, don't stay on one screen: VMware and MPlayer. Both enlarge to the size of one screen, but sit in the middle of the two. This is completely useless. I have fiddled endlessly with xorg settings and KDE's window manager settings, but all to no avail.
AFAIK - you can not have 3d accell on more than one screen, I think I read something like this on nvidia forums. Anyway, I could never make it run on both screens. Well, on my work box (Radeon 7000, the the default xorg/kernel driver, and two 19" screens at 1280x1024 each) I'm using FBmerge. My xorg.conf doesn't even have a definition for the second monitor. I can open glxgears and drag it to the second screen, and it continues to run
Sunny wrote: properly 3D accelerated. But I just noticed, if I move it beyond the middle (same as with Google Earth), the window goes blank. Until I know otherwise, I'll assume that is a limitation of video memory - the card has only 32MB.
VMWare is not yet xinerama-capable. According to posts on their forums, this is planned for some future release. As a workaround, use the QuickSwitch mode. That makes it a little better - at least I can put it in 1024x768 now without having to scroll.
For Mplayer, use -xineramascreen option. Great! That solves that one. Thanks!
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participants (3)
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koffiejunkie -
Philipp Thomas -
Sunny