Dual-head configuration

Today I took some time to properly configure the computer I have on my parents house. Even though I don’t spend much time here I want it to be as geeky as possible.

Since I have 1 monitor I don’t use and a graphics card that supports dual-head I decided to give it a try.

I would like to credit all the sources, but I Googled allot and gathered information from several places.

First of all I made a copy of my /etc/X11/xorg.conf to a safe place. Then I ran aticonfig --initial. This will create an ATI device section on X.org configuration file capable of loading fglrx drivers.

Then I issued the following command:

sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=left

This will create the initial configuration on xorg.conf for dual-head.

After this I restarted X (CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE). The second monitor was running as a clone (same image as the main monitor).

Since this worked out it was time to try Big Desktop.

sudo aticonfig --dtop=horizontal

Another X restart.

The image was now expanded to the secondary monitor on the left side. One problem, though.

Instead of the mouse leaving the main monitor by the left side (the side which the secondary monitor is located) it was leaving by the opposite side.

To fix this we can manually edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and change, on the ‘Device’ section, Option "DesktopSetup" "horizontal" to Option "DesktopSetup" "horizontal,reverse".

I now have it working exactly as I want!

Here’s a screenshot, in case you’re interested.

Information about my graphics card:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AP [Radeon 9600]

August 2, 2007 | Filed Under Ubuntu

 

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