Arch Linux

Toxcity

Member

From: Oxford

Registered: 2012-01-14

Posts: 40

[SOLVED] Seperate X Screen

Good afternoon all!

I have been playing with Arch for the last month now and LOVE it! What I am working on now is my screen setup which is being a great pain.
Okay, I have a Geforce 9800GX2 which is a SLI card meaning each DVI output is on a seperate card, this makes Twinview impossible. So seperate X screens it is. BUT with Xineramma you don't get any special hardware acceleration which I want. With Xineramma off all I get is the desktop on the main screen and a black screen with just the default X cursor on the second screen.

Basically, can I start a second desktop enviroment on the second screen? I don't really care if I can't move windows between them I just want to be able to run different programs on each screen. Is this possible? If so how in the world do you configure it?

Due to just a black screen with the X pointer I was thinking it was just running a very basic X session. How do I get it to run my Openbox session?

Thanks in advance guys!

Nic

Last edited by Toxcity (2012-02-16 12:54:21)

cteeto

Member

Registered: 2012-01-08

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Seperate X Screen

What Desktop environment are you using?

In my experience, what happens when you use separate x screens is that your DE is running on both screens. Your second screen is blank because all of your stuff that starts when you log in (the panel) starts on your first screen. If you just want to start programs on the second screen, you could use a DE that gives you an applications menu on a right click, and start them from there (your mouse can move from one screen to the other right?), or you could use the environmental variable DISPLAY before you start a program:

First you need to find out the number of your second X screen:

      $ nvidia-settings -q screens

It is usually something like 0.1, then use:

      $ DISPLAY=:0.1 firefox

or whatever program in place of firefox.

I am not very experienced in Arch yet, so please someone correct me if I am wrong, of if there is a better way.

Toxcity

Member

From: Oxford

Registered: 2012-01-14

Posts: 40

Re: [SOLVED] Seperate X Screen

Thanks for the reply mate!
I'm running a system very similar to ArchBang. I run Openbox so I do have a right click application menu. What would be perfect is to start up a wallpaper, tint2 toolbar and conky all on the second screen and obviously have the Openbox right click menu for starting apps.

At the moment I don't even have the Openbox menu. Just the default X cursur which looks like and X.

I use Slim as the login manager.

Thanks!

Toxcity

Member

From: Oxford

Registered: 2012-01-14

Posts: 40

Re: [SOLVED] Seperate X Screen

Been messing around today and have no cracked it using the DISPLAY= command.

This is what my autostart config looks like now for Openbox:

xset m 10 1 &
DISPLAY=:0.1 openbox &  <---- Starts Openbox on the second screen
tint2 &
DISPLAY=:0.1 tint2 & <----- Starts tint2 on the second screen
volumeicon -b &
nitrogen --restore &
DISPLAY=:0.1 xcompmgr -CcFf & <----- Starts composition on the second screen. 
xcompmgr -CcFf &

With that done I now have two identical screens running on a SLI card. The only downside is that I can't move Windows across but to be honest it does make it far more organised.

Thanks for the idea, cteeto!

Last edited by Toxcity (2012-01-15 21:29:50)

cteeto

Member

Registered: 2012-01-08

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] Seperate X Screen

No problem! Sorry I couldn't get back to you, but you got it under control. Glad I could help with my little amount of experience...

Yeah you can't move the windows across the screens with seperate X screens, only with twinview, or xinerama enabled.