Xinerama + Virtual Desktops

[Scott Rubin]

Paul,

You have it right now? How did you set it up?  I think it might be 
difficult for me to do. I'm not actually using real xinerama. I have a 
GeForce FX5900 and I'm using twinview because the card has a DVI out and 
a VGA out.  The only way to use them both at once is with twinview.  The 
thing about twinview though is that it pretends to be xinerama 99% 
perfectly.  So for example ion, which has the best xinerama support of 
any wm I've seen, can't tell the difference and acts exactly as if I had 
two video cards with xinerama.

The Nvidia Linux driver readme alluded to running a setup like you have, 
and I tried it previously to no avail.  Maybe if I could see your 
xf86config or something?  I don't know.

Also, that whole panel problem.  I've avoided that entirely with some 
magic.  I use gdm so I put an xfce4.desktop in /usr/share/xsessions that 
calls startxfce4.  Then I copied /etc/xfce4/xinitrc to ~/.xfce4/xinitrc 
and made it executable. This way other users get standard xfce, but I 
can change mine.  I completely removed the entire block having to do 
with the panel and removed the & after xfdesktop.  This gives control of 
the session to xfdesktop instead of the panel.  Because of that I can 
now run whatever program I want as the panel, or nothing, or whatever. 
Personally I put a symlink in Desktop/Autostart that makes gdesklets 
start and I use the starterbar desklet.  You can do this and then run 
the panel only once, or run two different kinds of panels or whatever.

OK, time to go coding.

Thanks again,

Scott

Paul Bohme wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Jun 2004 18:33:00 -0400
> Scott Rubin <slr2777 at cs.rit.edu> wrote:
> 
> 
>>OK,
>>
>>Tell me if this idea is crazy, already implemented, or the greatest 
>>thing ever because I'm not sure.
>>
>>I already know that in CVS xinerama support is much improved, but as I
>>don't like to do anything that will mess up portage (gentoo user) I 
>>don't use it yet.
> 
> 
> There's always the possibility of creating an ebuild to pull cvs sources
> and build them.  That's living life a bit on the edge, but ... ;-)
> 
> 
>>Anyway, right now, in xfce 4.05 the way it works is this.  The virtual
>>desktop encompasses both monitors.  If I want something to be always
>>on the left monitor I have to make it sticky so it is on all desktops.
>>
>>Also the pager displays the desktops as one very wide thing instead of
>>two separate squares, which makes more sense visually as I have two 
>>monitors with different resolutions.  So I have been making heavy
>>heavy use of devilspie so that applications I want to appear on the
>>smaller monitor always do not appear in the pager or taskbar.
>>
>>I just had a vision of how it could be perfect.  First, make virtual 
>>desktops a single monitor in size.  So I can set the left screen to be
>>desktop 5 and the right screen to be desktop 1, or any other
>>combination I want.  I should also be able to put the same desktop on
>>both screens. Of course sometimes I want it to be the other way
>>around, so maybe have some desktops be one screen wide and some be
>>dual screen? That needs more thought.
> 
> 
> I run both my work and home systems dual-headed, both with XFCE 4.0.x
> but with dual (dueling?) panels.  Although this isn't the 'recommended'
> configuration, it gives me exactly the kind of setup that you're talking
> about.  Having the monitors rotate through desktops independently is the
> make-or-break feature that makes running against separate X displays
> worthwhile.
> 
> 
>>The second though I had is this. If I can put any virtual desktop on
>>any screen at any time, what happens to things like pager, taskbar,
>>panel, etc.  What  about gaim and gkrellm/torsmo/gdesklets,etc that
>>you want to always see?  Add the ability to make windows stick not to
>>all virtual desktops, but to a specific monitor.  So for example if I
>>set gaim to stick to the right monitor then no matter which desktop I
>>select to be displayed on the right monitor gaim will be there.
>>
>>This idea requires a lot more interface and functionality thought, but
>>I feel it would be really neat and makes a lot of sense.  How do you
>>feel about it? Does any of you other xinerama users feel this would be
>>a good addition? I think it just makes sense in a virtual desktop
>>based window manager.  You have many desktops, some are visible and
>>some are not. You have two monitors so you can view any two of these
>>desktops in any combination you want.  Maybe I'm nuts and this will
>>actually be terrible usability wise...
> 
> 
> Just for the record, yes - you are slightly nuts.  It also sounds like
> exactly the functionality I know and love right now. ;-)  The only real
> 'drawbacks' to my current configuration is that I have 2 panels duking
> it out for control of the config file, so when I change one I have to be
> careful to change them both to keep my changes from being trounced. 
> Additionally, applications are 'trapped' on the screen they're started
> on.  This is actually an almost non-issue, as my habit is to run
> email/gaim/firefox/OOo/etc on one monitor, and the usual explosion of
> shells and editors that is my development environment on the other.
> 
> Perhaps an interesting approach is to let the window manager assign
> certain desktops to certain monitors, then when you 'pin' an
> application, it keeps to the set of desktops visible on that monitor. 
> You'd still maintain the flexibility of moving things where you wanted
> without restrictions, but keep things reasonably
> structured/compartmentalized at the same time.
> 
> Then again, I could be smoking the same crazy-weed that you are..
> 
>   -P