Arch Linux

jash

Member

Registered: 2009-08-24

Posts: 10

Xinerama and Xrandr with xmonad and dmenu

Howdy,

I am not exactly new to Linux but I feel as though my understand still only scratches the surface of the vast information related to Linux.

Recently, I stumbled upon the tiling window managers and landed with xmonad which I am really liking. So I have been working on configuring xmonad to my liking and have run into some areas where I understand very little.

I have a 20" crt monitor (res 1600x1200) and a 23" lcd monitor (res 1920x1080) which is to the right of the crt. Currently is am using the following command in my ~/.xinitrc file.

xrandr --output VGA-0 --left-of DVI-0 --mode 1600x1200 --rate 85.0 --perferred &
xrandr --output DVI-0 --right-of VGA-0 --mode 1920x1080 &

These commands work well enough however dmenu runs across the complete virtual screen and since the lcd monitor is smaller it does not display the dmenu.

Additionally, because of the support structure of the lower edge of the two screens don't line up. I would like to account for this in extending the virtual screen. Here is a picture.

In my digging I keep running across something called xinerama. What is it? Is it different from xrandr? Should I be using it instead or is there something better to be using to accomplish these tasks?

Any thoughts and advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank-you