BAZOMBO: a discursive miscellany of topics

Setting up a dual head gutsy box with ati

Wednesday, April 16 2008

It took a little while to get a second monitor set up today. I’ve never set up a dual head Linux box before, and I’ve learned a few things in the process:

• the preferred way changes fast enough that the top results in Google can be rather out of date.
• although it looks as though the Gutsy screen administration tool will work, it doesn’t.
• xrandr is currently the way to go.
• there are reasonable instructions on the Debian XStrikeForce wiki, whereas the Ubuntu forums etc are hopeless. Go Debian.
• you don’t get any Compiz eye candy if the virtual desktop size is big enough. This is to do with memory limits on the video card, so no quick fixes either.

Still, it takes me back (in a pleasant way) to the days when I had a dual head Mac years ago, with my markup on one display and the rendered result in the other. Although System 7 got it right straight away with no fooling around…

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Tags: gutsy ~ linux ~ xrandr ~ ati ~ dual head ~ ubuntu

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