Arch Linux

Fitzwilliam

Member

Registered: 2010-12-23

Posts: 21

[SOLVED] Separate X screens with Compiz? Or KDE?

Hi,

So, this is a weird one. I'm nearly blind, so I need display magnification to do any work; Compiz and KDE provide equally good full-screen magnification and color inversion, so we're good there. The thing is, I also want to be able to use two monitors - one to work on, and the other for video, music, super-huge text files, etc. Unfortunately, when I zoom in using either Compiz's Enhanced Zoom Desktop plugin or Kwin's Zoom effect, it treats both monitors as one screen and zooms the whole thing, which makes it hell whenever my cursor gets near a screen edge, zooms things like movies that I want to stay normal, and generally throws me for a loop.

What I want is to have two independent screens, with independent content, and to be able to magnify one without magnifying the other. I swear that I was able to do this back in the day, but it's been a bit since I used desktop Linux. Any of the wise ones able to help me out here?

EDIT: I've already tried the Wiki's Multihead article.

SPECS

linux 4.12.4-1
nvidia 384.59-3
mate-desktop 1.18.0-1
compiz 0.9.13.1-3

OR

linux 4.12.4-1
nvidia 384.59-3
plasma-desktop 5.10.4-1
kwin 5.10.4-1

Last edited by Fitzwilliam (2017-08-13 22:44:48)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 50,983

Re: [SOLVED] Separate X screens with Compiz? Or KDE?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mu … te_screens

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Fitzwilliam

Member

Registered: 2010-12-23

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Separate X screens with Compiz? Or KDE?

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mu … te_screens

Hey, thanks, I should've said that I already tried that article. I do get two X screens, but there's no WM in the second - just blackness with my mouse moving around - and I don't know enough about X, Compiz, or Kwin to get it working. Any advice?

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 50,983

Re: [SOLVED] Separate X screens with Compiz? Or KDE?

Yeah, that's normal.
You want to launch another desktop session (or at least WM) on that display. They are absolutely independent - you cannot eg. move a window from one to the other.
But you can eg. run "mplayer -fs -display :0.1 video.mp4" from your "main" session on display :0.0 on the other display :0.1
This also works w/ compiz (though you might have trouble running two displays accelerated on the same GPU, so preferably run openbox on that display) to get a WM on the other display etcetc.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

Fitzwilliam

Member

Registered: 2010-12-23

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Separate X screens with Compiz? Or KDE?

But you can eg. run "mplayer -fs -display :0.1 video.mp4" from your "main" session on display :0.0 on the other display :0.1
This also works w/ compiz (though you might have trouble running two displays accelerated on the same GPU, so preferably run openbox on that display) to get a WM on the other display etcetc.

Thank you so much! It's working now - independent zoom levels and everything - and while there are one or two kinks to work out, it's a huge improvement over the old situation. I still need to look up more about Openbox, etc., because trying to run it only on the second monitor never seems to work, but two Compiz instances run perfectly on my system, anyway.

Thanks again!