Specifying the primary monitor with xrandr, xfce4 and xserver-xorg-video-intel

[mmassonnet at gmail.com]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2007 at 09:56:46AM -0600, Andrew Robinson wrote:
Hey Andrew,

> Is there any way to tell XFCE which monitor to treat as the primary one?

This depends only on X AFAICT.

> I am using the intel graphics driver, and am positioning my monitor
> using xrandr's 1.2 features:
> 
> #enable external display
> xrandr --output TMDS --auto
> # set location
> xrandr --output TMDS-1 --above LVDS
> 
> all my applications go to the TMDS-1 (External DVI monitor) and not to
> the LVDS. Even worse, when I disconnect my external monitor, all the
> open widows shift down and I am left with the title bars only showing
> just above my panel at the bottom of my laptop.
> 
> I would like my laptop to be the primary monitor. Is there any way to
> do this with XFCE?

I can't help because here the applications just open on the right
display (where the mouse has the focus), but as I managed yesterday
night to plug my external LCD display on my laptop, and I worked it out
even if it was a bit messy, I can tell you my configuration.

I do see two screens in the configuration dialogs of the panel and the
desktop, but if I type xrandr I have only one screen listed:
8<---cut here---
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 1824, maximum 1280 x 1824
---cut here--->8

As you can see the max height is uncommon, this is because I had to
tweak the xorg.conf file by appending a Virtual line like that:
8<---cut here---
Section "Screen"
	Monitor         "LVDS"
[...]
        SubSection "Display"
                Depth           24
                Modes           "1280x800"
                Virtual         1280 1824
        EndSubSection
EndSection
---cut here--->8
…otherwise all I could get was a clone of my laptop.

Now that I had enough space available for a top/bottom dual head setup,
I did the same as you.  --auto to activate the VGA output, and VGA
--above LVDS.  But it was a bit of a mess, and I managed to fix values
in xorg.conf like that:
8<---cut here---
Section "Monitor"
        Identifier  "LVDS"
        Option      "Position"              "0 1024"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier  "VGA"
        Option      "Above"                 "LVDS"
        Option      "Position"              "0 0"
EndSection
---cut here--->8
…but this may only happen here because I combined a 1280x800 resolution
with a 1280x1024.

Now to get back to your problem, it is weird that windows get moved when
you unplug the cable.  On my side nothing happens until I specify by
hand --output VGA --off, and then I get all the windows from the bottom
screen to the absolute bottom (e.g. I can only see the title bar).  This
is kinda a good behavior.

http://files.m8t.mine.nu/etc/xorg.conf.lapt0p

> Thanks,
> Andrew

HTH,
Regards,
Mike