[SOLVED] Dual Screen and Full Screen Applications

[piga]

Hello,

I am playing around with a dual screen setup in Fedora 13 and Fedora 15, and have one critical problem that makes using it with this almost unusable. Upon launching a full screen application such as a game, one screen powers off and I loose all of my display settings. Unless I can get this resolved, the system is unusable.

Are there any suggestions about how to get around this? My ideal setup would be for it to be mirrored when playing a fullscreen application, and then got back to normal operations for the regular desktop.

[piga]

Well, it looks like this is a common problem, and there are some workarounds:
http://maketecheasier.com/run-fullsc...ors/2010/03/01

One that is not mentioned in that article that I have done is using XGamer to run games in a separate Openbox session. I elaborated how to use it and install it on Fedora on a separate forum when I first started playing with it back in June:
http://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.p...rformance.472/

However, I think a better solution could be found if I could have my setup like this:

With the way I have the X configuration set above, you are given two separate "screens". Using multiple screens in this way gives advantages mainly in terms of speed and hardware acceleration, and in allowing different colour depths on different screens. Another advantage is that your window manager effectively runs independently on each screen, so you can have different configurations on each, or many workspaces on each screen. The main disadvantage is that you cannot move windows between two screens unless your program has a facility for doing this internally. As well, programs cannot overlap screens or stretch over all of them.

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/X.Org/Dual_Monitors

This would be better for me, I think, as I want the second screen to effectively function as a separate unit from the first. I do not care if I can not drag between them, I can just load what I want on the second screen from that screen, and vice versa. However, even after creating a Xorg.conf similar to his, I can not get it to act the same way. Gnome irritatingly clings to the one stretched screen on both setup.

Can someone help me get my system configured like this? I am using the free radeon driver on Fedora 13.

[piga]

Well, despite not getting any assistance from anyone on here, I have managed to get my machine setup the way I wanted it to be. The setup I was referring to earlier is actually called "Zaphod Mode", after the character Zaphod Beeblebrox, and needs to be declared in your Xorg.conf file.

Here is an example of my working configuration:

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "RightHead"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "LeftHead"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "radeon"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "radeon"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Card0"
Monitor "RightHead"
Option "ZaphodHeads" "DVI-0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Card1"
Monitor "LeftHead"
Option "ZaphodHeads" "VGA-0"
EndSection

As an aide to anyone else trying to setup up Zaphod Mode on their machines, the way I have it defined above will treat the Monitor connected to the DVI port as primary. If you want it to be the other way round, simply switch the "DVI-0" and "VGA-0" options in the screen sections. My configuration above also assumes that my second monitor is placed to the left of my primary. To changes this, simply change "LeftOf" to "RightOf" in the SeverLayout section. Also, make sure that driver specified in the Device sections matches that of the one for your graphics card.

Zaphod Mode has removed my problems when running full screen applications, and while I can no longer drag windows between screens, I am quite happy with how my system is setup. For me, having each monitor treated separately actually suits my workflow better, as it means I can simply ignore the other screen unless I actually feel that I want to use it. And for gamers there is simply no better option if you actually want to play your games full screen.