Yippee!!! I got dual monitor working with Ubuntu 9.04. Check the screenshot at the bottom of the post.
I bought NVidia GeForce 9800 GT 2 months back. Newegg had a good deal on it (I think they still have). The card is energy efficient and quiet. I don’t play lots of games, so I don’t know how high the temperature goes. For normal operation in Ubuntu, the temperature stays anywhere between 46C to 54C. Installing the card in Ubuntu was smooth and Ubuntu automatically detected the card and asked me to enable the NVidia proprietary driver. I’m not sure how to increase the fan speed of the card in Ubuntu.
I also bought an ASUS VH236H 23″ widescreen 1080p monitor from Buy.com. They had a good deal on that monitor. I wanted to buy a glossy monitor since my laptop, HDTV etc. are matte finish (for better reason), but this monitor is also matte. It has glossy bezel, but the screen is matte. I don’t regret buying this monitor after using it for a month. The pictures are crisp clear. It has 2ms response time, 1920*1080 resolution (1080p), 5 preset modes, It’s energy star rated. It has HDMI, DVI and VGA inputs, so I can use this as HDTV. It also has built in speakers, but I don’t use that. The only negative thing is, the stand is not height adjustable.
I connected my old 19″ Samsung monitor and the new one to the NVidia GeForce 9800 GT video card using the VGA to DVI connector (old monitor) and DVI (new one) cables. After I started Ubuntu, I went to NVidia settings manager and saw the 2 monitors under X Server display configuration. The 2nd monitor (old one) was disabled by default. I clicked on the 2nd monitor picture and clicked on Configure button. I was then presented with 3 options (shown below).
I first selected Seperate X screen, thinking I would use them as 2 different monitor, but that didn’t work. When I selected that, only the 2nd monitor worked. I then selected the TwinView option which then spreaded my desktop across both monitors. In Twinview, you’ll see the taskbar, menu etc in only one monitor. You can move the application across both monitors. When I enabled TwinView, I believe, due to the way I connected the monitors to the dual DVI outputs in the video card, my old 19″ monitor was taken as default with menus and taskbars and the new 23″ was used as an extended monitor. All I have to do then was to click on my primary 23″ monitor and put +0+0 under position and on my secondary monitor, added +1920+0 where 1920 is the primary 23″ monitor resolution. Doing that made my new monitor as primary and the old one as secondary.
(Primary 23# monitor)
(Secondary 19″ monitor)
Another major problem I encountered was trying to save the configuration. I tried to save the settings by clicking Save to X Configuration File button, but it said I didn’t have permission to write to Xorg.conf file. I then tried starting the NVidia settings manager under super user (sudo) mode and tried the same. It still didn’t work. What I then did was, I made a backup of xorg.conf file, opened a terminal and opened the xorg.conf file using sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, deleted everything in that file, then went back to NVidia control panel, set the monitors as I explained above, clicked the save to X configuration button in the NVidia control panel (under X Server display configuration) . When you click the save button, I think you will see a preview button to see the new xorg code. Click the preview button, copy the code and paste that code in xorg.conf file, save and close it. Restart Ubuntu and it should work.
Technorati Tags: Ubuntu, Linux, Dual Monitor, NVidia GeForce 9800 GT, ASUS VH236H, Samsung, Xorg
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