Arch Linux

muunleit

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2008-02-23

Posts: 234

Xorg - switch between one and two screen desktop

Hey

I would like to add something about switching between one- and two-screen-desktop by using Server-config-Option to the Wikipage of Xorg.

The story is...
I have got 2 screens at my computer using nvidia-twinview. Cause of this, I have had a problem with some programms (mostly games), which start in fullscreen and cannot be switched to window-mode. Playing them, I would have the crossair in the middle of two screens, which isn't very practically. Then I looked around a little bit, searched the wiki and I tried some strange workarounds with bashscripts copiing different xorg.conf and .xinitrc for every case. Some days later I read some man-pages and found what I was searching for.
My solution is to use xinit with a xorg.conf for two screens and a .xinitrc containing my WM and some programms for everyday use and if I need one screen I start

xinit /absolute/path/to/programm -- -config path/from/xorg.conf/to/xorg.conf_1_screen

or use a bashscript like

#!/bin/bash

xinit $1 -- -config xorg.conf_1_screen

*less_to_write*

Maybe anyone else is searching for the same too, therefore I want to add something about it the Xorg-Article in the Arch-Wiki, but I'm not sure where and how.
Maybe at the end of point 5

If you use a xorg.conf for two screens (maybe with nvidia-twinview or xinerama) and you sometimes need to start a programm with only one screen (cause of fullscreen-mode cannot be switched off), you can build an additional xorg.conf-1 for one screen and start the xserver with xinit ... (see above) or make a bashscript like ... (see code above).

Is it ok this way? Sorry, I didn't wrote any wiki yet.

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"The mind can make a heaven out of hell or a hell out of heaven" -- John Milton