New KScreen Supplies Some Magic For Multi-Monitor Linux Set-Ups 183
An anonymous reader points out developer Àlex Fiestas's work on multiple monitor configuration for Linux. In particular, the screen manager that he and Dan Vrátil are working on — KScreen — gives KDE users a utility "making the configuration of monitors either auto-magical or super simple." This is one thing that's certainly gotten much better in recent years for Linux GUI users in general, but the video in the linked post makes me a little envious — another good reason to swap desktops once in a while.
When I was a kid... (Score:5, Interesting)
The first time I ran X on my home computer, I had to call Diamond to get the timings for my SpeedStar card so I could calculate the correct values to put in my xconfig file. And the person who answered the phone knew exactly what I needed, flipped thru a binder, and read off the numbers.
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Do you go to therapy weekly or monthly?
Monthly... He would go weekly but the analyst's office is a five mile walk uphill, both ways.
Re:When I was a kid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Neither. The OP dude grew up in an age when you had access to information and an ability to apply that information directly to troubleshooting and solving real world problems. He's probably as mellow as they get.
It's the modern devices with propriety drivers and documentation that make me crazy.
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Having troubleshot and patched his own brain with a homemade electroshock machine? Solves many real world problems. Dumb and happy is within all of our reach.
I just wish I could flush a bunch of obsolete information from my grey matter and recover the space.
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yes, I remember those days. I used to code OS/2 (it was a long time ago) and I had 2 binders full of everything you could ever want to know about the APIs available to me. When I had an Amiga you could buy 3 rather large books with everything, down to wiring and chipset information. Even Windows NT (3.51) had a set of 5 books in hardbound covers that told you everything.
Today, the closest you get to support is:
"hello my name is Vijay how many I help you. I see what the problem might be being, please try to
Suggestion (Score:5, Interesting)
A suggestion to the developers. Please allow for degenerate cases. I deal with a set of old, specialized, practically irreplaceable displays that cannot produce DPMS data. In the past I've suffered with embedded displays that produce completely inaccurate DPMS data.
Allow the operator a means to manually override whatever display parameters your software obtains (probably via xrandr) from the operating system. The display parameters are often bogus and must be corrected.
Re:Suggestion (Score:5, Insightful)
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I very much agree with you!
[rant] I tire pretty quickly of the rants against KDE (and any other "Free" software for that reason) because someones one off, special case, old shit does not work. Usually that's followed by "KDE sucks because my special case bullshit works in Unity/Gnome/Xfce, etc..".
Here is a suggestion for people. If you have old special case bullshit, even if you paid a million dollars for it 15 years ago, go buy some new stuff.. or don't have the expectation that a new operating system
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No. Expecting your software to work on all hardware out of the box is not sensible or logical.
Protocols get modified, misinterpreted, corrupted, or just plain screwed up by bad programmers. Anticipating this is called "validating input". Your program did not generate the data, therefore it is input, and you should provide some method for it to be validated, overridden or ignored. I work in software QA and I tire quickly of developers assuming that data derived from external sources is somehow sacrosanct
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I'm not running "old hardware" and all these KDE bugs, due to developers making incorrect X assumptions instead of actually knowing what they're doing, are the last thing keeping me from running KDE4.
FWIW.
The only "new" stuff was after 2:40 (Score:5, Informative)
Basically..
* it will remember what you configuration was used with that monitor
* when you close your laptop it will go to the native resolution of the attached screen
I don't even know how new those are, but I've never personally used (or noticed) either of them before...
Everything else, I've been using succesfully since I started using laptops on both Windows and Linux.
Cool Demo (Score:2)
"gotten much better"? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article says: "This is one thing that's certainly gotten much better in recent years for Linux GUI users in general..." -- I cannot agree. While connecting a beamer to a notebook is simpler today, support for multiple monitors (of a desktop machine) is far from where it was some years ago. For years I had been able to disable the (default) Xinerama options, so I could have two separate instances of (e.g. KDE 3) running on both screens. That allowed me for example to stay on virtual desktop 1 on the left monitor and cycle through my virtual desktops on the right monitor. (Imagine lots of data sources on the right screen and some application I use to combine stuff on the left monitor; I want to switch desktops without the left monitor changing its content). This is still possible today, but it's a lot harder and depends on what kind of graphics card you use. Granted, my old way required knowledge of the xorg.conf syntax, but once it was finished it gave me maximum configurability. Last time I checked, KDE 4 wasn't able to start two instances on :0.0 and :0.1 properly which is why I'm still using KDE 3 (a.k.a. "Trinity" today).
Hans-Georg
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You could always drop back to launching the programs from terminal, and specifying the DISPLAY environment variable beforehand. Another alternative is to edit the programs command in the launcher to specify the DISPLAY variable. I run three instances of the X-Plane flight simulator on three monitors. I built a stand so that it wraps around my head. This requires that I turn off Xineranama and use the displays separately. I have a shell script that launches each X-Plane instance in the background, export
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Until it's put into a distro.
Jesus, stop acting like a jackass.
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So does Apple, before creating a distribution of Darwin and shipping it, compiled and configured, through the internet.
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> I'm glad that the Linux desktop has this feature after being on AppleOS and Windows for only about ten years.
+...with loads of caveats.
And yet, this is still a relatively obscure feature. So the idea that your typical user will be "running off into the night" after 10 minutes is rather unwarranted.
Most people will be shocked that you can do this sort of thing with any OS.
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"Most people will be shocked that you can do this sort of thing with any OS"
not to anyone that uses a laptop and a monitor. this is a pretty standard issue thing now
Re:Yes, this is amazing (Score:4, Informative)
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dynamictwinview (nvidia) and XFCE4 here as well. Works out of the box, as did my old laptop with intel graphics and randr.
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oh its been much longer than 10 years, 98 maybe 95 could handle it with a simple trip to the display properties, and I have an 1986 macSE that uses its internal monitor and a full page radius display at the same time in os6 with a little utility
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Actually, when Linux supports the kind of network transparency that allows efficient desktop sharing with multiple parties instead of resorting to a crude bitmap-tosser like VNC, then we will have caught up to the Windows and OS X of long ago.
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I've actually used what MacOS has to offer in this regard.
No thanks.
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Sadly, OSX uses VNC, its pretty shitty in that respect.
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Which one of those lets me start an application on one machine and then continue using it on another machine like Windows has been able to do for well over a decade?
With all the praise that X gets for its network transparency, it's mostly unusable except on the highest bandwidth links because its synchronous calls and uber-chattiness make it unusable without adding a wrapper around it, like NX does. That's the irony. Pretty much any protocol can be called "network transparent" as long as that includes wri
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Start another SSH+X-Forwarding on another system, attach to screen using the named window, and foreground the process.
Haven't tried it, but it should work. "screen" (or one the many others that do the same job) should keep the application up and running while you switch machines just like it does for console applications.
Or you could just install a Remote Desktop
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The X server that the application will connect to is based on the value of the DISPLAY environment variable at the time it is loaded. Backgrounding and then foregrounding won't result in it sending it's stuff to a new X server. In fact, once it's attached to an X server, it can't be detached and reattached to another X server. This is a limitation of X -- the very limitation that I was talking about.
In addition to this, the screen session inherits and keeps the DISPLAY variable set during the X forwardin
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I haven't used it myself, but maybe this does what you want?
http://xpra.org/ [xpra.org]
Or is this the same as the XRDP situation? Although, I don't really understand what you mean by "simply move it to another server" in the Windows context.
Can you really start an executable on one machine and move the running executable to another machine? Your comment further up merely says:
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Can you really start an executable on one machine and move the running executable to another machine?
No, I mean can start an application running on machine A and displaying on A's display, then access that same instance of the application from machine B's display, then display C if I want etc., all the while never exiting the application running on machine A.
xrpa seems interesting but appears to be VNC for X, not actual X. This is what the GGGGP was referring to as "bitmap tossing" which is pretty useless over slow connections while windows RDP is not.
To me, this sounds like RDP
Which is exactly what I was talking about. Windows ha
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Replying to myself. XRPA does in fact work with the following caveats:
1. It does appear to use bitmap tossing and probably for this reason is painfully slow over low bandwidth connections - far more sluggish than Windows' RDP.
2. Like "screen" for console apps, you'd have to have started the application in the xrpa session in order to be able to attach it to a remote screen.
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Replying to myself. XRPA does in fact work with the following caveats:
1. It does appear to use bitmap tossing and probably for this reason is painfully slow over low bandwidth connections - far more sluggish than Windows' RDP. 2. Like "screen" for console apps, you'd have to have started the application in the xrpa session in order to be able to attach it to a remote screen.
FYI - XRPA, which I referenced in my original reply, supports both VNC and RDP protocols via the same library used by various Linux RDP clients to talk with Windows RDP Servers. So I would expect they would be doing the same compression when using RDP, and like with Windows it displays on a local X instance (Windows Terminal Services Display) that is then forwarded to the remote side.
Windows does not support remote rendering of applications like the X Protocol does. The Win32 API simply doesn't support i
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Windows does not support remote rendering of applications like the X Protocol does.
Wrong. Hasn't been that way for some time. Don't know when Citrix started offering remote rendering but the built in TS in Vista does it to a minor extent and Win7 does it to a large extent.
The Win32 API doesn't need to be modified to support it, just the subsystem under it. Switching between the two is a simply matter of forcing a redraw, which all apps have to support anyway. Top it off with the fact that RDP supports bitmap caching and you don't even need to do full redraws.
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Being limited to one to one instead of many to one is what I would find unacceptable
It's X that has this limitation. With X, when I attach an application to a display (X server) it's forever tied to that display and can't be moved.
There is no such limitation in Windows. The only limitation in Windows is that I have to move all my applications in my session to that display, but this is hardly a noteworthy limitation since it's MY session and I'm not setting at the old display anymore.
With X, I have to stop the application, then start it on the new display. Hooray, I don't have to bring m
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You don't. Sorry, didn't mean to suggest this was possible.
To be fair, I'd be perfectly happy to transfer the entire X session from one machine to another (provided X was also made as fast as NX), but that doesn't seem to be possible except through VNC which is unacceptable in its slowness and its inability to change screen dimensions, or xpra which is unacceptably slow also, and often cripples performance and features when running locally.
So the point is that the use case in Windows where I can start an a
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It actually is possible, though it's rather complex to do manually. It's used automatically in some places, for example Win7's Virtual XP Mode will appear to run XP programs on the Win7 desktop by remoting them from the VM. It can also be manually configured (at least on Server, and possibly on Client): http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Configuring_RemoteApps_on_Windows_Server_2008 [techotopia.com]
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Re:WOW!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, no, you could not.
You didn't (and still don't) even have a separation between window manager and applications, so hung application produces pretty patterns on the screen when you try to drag your window, if you can even drag it at all. You didn't (and still don't) have usable multiple-desktop or multiple-viewports support, so changes in resolution only affect one giant constantly-displayed area, with all windows mapped to it. You can't allocate a monitor connected to one host to become a part of the environment for other hosts, or combine multiple hosts with their monitors to show a single desktop, with applications spanning all of them.
So you are comparing the ability to change the resolution on the fly without restarting applications (what Windows had before Linux got it in 2001, and became part of mainstream in 2007) against actual usable management of resolutions on multiple screens, some virtual, some networked. And no, your stupid Terminal Services don't count.
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so hung application produces pretty patterns on the screen when you try to drag your window, if you can even drag it at all.
This shows that people like you have last used Windows back in the XP or even ME days. Get with the times instead of wallowing in outdated criticisms.
You can't allocate a monitor connected to one host to become a part of the environment for other hosts, or combine multiple hosts with their monitors to show a single desktop, with applications spanning all of them.
This is soooooo useful to so many desktop users compared to the use case of extending desktop to another monitor on the desk without fiddling with multiple config files and utilities. *snicker*
And no, your stupid Terminal Services don't count.
Yes, lets discount actual working remote desktop over even dialup,and lets trumpet outdated technology requiring a LAN.
Re:WOW!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
This shows that people like you have last used Windows back in the XP or even ME days. Get with the times instead of wallowing in outdated criticisms.
Now the effect is masked by the speed of processors and programmers carefully starting tens of threads for their UI, but it's still there (window won't even move if anything gets blocked). Meanwhile, X applications may run on some remote m68k, and won't slow down the rest of UI.
This is soooooo useful to so many desktop users
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
compared to the use case of extending desktop to another monitor on the desk without fiddling with multiple config files and utilities. *snicker*
Do you even understand what this is about? All this IS IMPLEMENTED in nice UI, the article is about a new KDE utility for it.
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Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
Given that you have _several_ X Servers for Windows (some of them free), I can't see why not. What I can see is Linux distros like Ubuntu or Mint with completely broken XDMCP funcionality, and its a trending issue - that alone somewhat reflects the usage that kind of feature has nowadays. And the problems usually don't end with XDMCP.
Workstations users need that all the time, they just can't get it from Windows.
I don't know what a "workstation user" is. I know a lot of "workstation users" that only use Microsoft Office and Outlook. I also know a lot of them that use Adobe Photoshop ex
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Here you go for TS replacement (if you require such): http://www.nomachine.com/ [nomachine.com]
Protocol also has an OSS implementation, I believe it's called FreeNX.
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And it isn't even anywhere close to RDP.
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And what does RDP provide that NX does not?
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Audio is there (especially in the upcoming version). I can't speak on printer forwarding, I don't use a printer but maybe twice a year. Beyond that it's more then met my needs. (Actually, X over SSH usually meets my needs, but MS's equivalent is Remote App, not the full RDS. And I'm not paying for RDS licensing for my house (and my work would probably pick NX over RDS too. They don't consider my time as a valid cost factor in implementing anything).
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Yes they do (I think it's XenApp and XenDesktop, depending on which features you want). It works very well. Our client uses it - but you still have to pay MS licensing costs (which are insane).
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XDMCP and remote X are disabled on Ubuntu because for home users they are nothing but a potential security hole. Enabling them is trivial for those who need them.
X servers for Windows don't run Windows applications, and mostly don't run X applications, either, due to extreme ineficciency, outdated implementations, and nonexistent hardware support. Among other things, they don't support dynamic resolution changes and compositing. Apparently idiots like you believe that all X implementations are as crappy as
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Microsoft Office is an application for making pretty documents with incoherent formatting, and using a pseudo-database with calculations, that grew into something that has more in common with absurdist art than any productive activity. People who only use it, would be better off with a tablet-keyboard combination -- too bad, one that Microsoft tried to sell is total crap, at large extent because their tablet-style UI is almost as bad on tablets as it is on desktops. If you judge workstations use by the type of users who waste computers' capability the most, you you are bound to end up with idiotic preferences -- oh wait, this is what Windows mlti-screen support is!
Preface: I'm a mechanical engineer who makes custom designs of a "standard" product for customers all day. Getting correct answers back quickly is a big part of getting sales.
Okay, seeing as I use Microsoft Excel pretty heavily every day at work I'd like to point out the reason it gets so much use in the engineering world is that it really is the lowest common denominator. No one that isn't fresh out of school (i.e. less than 3-4 years on the job) has even touched VB.Net or any other programming language. I
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That's the false part -- it works just fine when enabled.
It doesn't. That's what broken means. And yes, you can "unbreak it" by installing another DM. Out of the box, its mostly broken.
It runs display procedures and input for them, you extraordinary pedant.
So, it displays the output, does not actually run the program. What I find extraordinary is that the quality of your insults improve when you're caught dead wrong. Not bad.
No, it's just you are an idiot and I am not.
Maybe you're delusional, but hey I'm not a pediatrician, It may happen you're just passing gas.
My Nokia N900 phone has a desktop based on a full-featured X server. It works great (including scaled live view of running applications) despite very limited CPU performance. So does Plasma Active on all current implementations.
Actually, that is a pretty cool device. But hardly a tablet.
Do you realize that everything -- absolutely everything that you have ever used -- exists because people like myself at some point made critically important design decision, before worthless scum like yourself became able to "design" things by copy/pasting their work?
It is odd how you defend yourself as a good decision make
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Wayland is one of the doomed projects that were supposed to replace X, but amounted to nothing. This shit is going on for as long as X11 existed.
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Are you from the future or something, cause Wayland just hit 1.0 for the protocol and isn't done yet. I suspect, rather, that you're just bashing Wayland because there's something you don't like about it but can't actually explain what it is.
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Not to bait you but you didn't actually debunk his post
I have explained that his comparison is invalid because he based it on one least-relevant feature.
are there any Win users here that use multiple monitors to give us a comparison?
You mean, gamers who have one box running fullscreen game on three screens (three is important because otherwise his gun's sight will be between screen edges)? And office dwellers who have Word on one screen and Excel on another because they have no scrollable/switchable viewports? With the way how Windows users use multiple monitors, no. Windows may be ready for desktop, but it's not ready for any serious use
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And office dwellers who have Word on one screen and Excel on another because they have no scrollable/switchable viewports?
Viewports makes sense for some applications and for low-res displays. I actually hate them, and toggling an app on a different viewport will toggle the whole viewport. On high-res monitors, you may find yourself dragging windows on a small applet on a corner of a screen.
On the other hand, I get more usable screen with Windows than I'd get with X. The difference is noticeable on high-res screens, and translates to more lines of code at once on each screen. Scalable font rendering is usually crappy in X, an
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So far, the only usable implementations of virtual desktops are in X, and everything else is total crap. Yes, even OSX. Obviously, a Windows user wouldn't know a case when virtual desktop are useful, from his own ass.
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Obviously, a Windows user wouldn't know a case when virtual desktop are useful, from his own ass.
Obviously, any narrow-minded individual has problems understanding a reality where people have different needs, so instead resorts to cheap sleazy insult. I could point out that none of what you actually said is true (some graphics adapters DO support scrollable viewports, Windows does provide switchable viewports, not everyone uses what you use, there is a shit ton of problems/issues with multi-monitor support in X, and some of them are more than a decade old, etc etc etc), but it would be pointless. A nar
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Tell me a few. It's a good time since I'm alone in an office full of about 30 dual and triple screen linux machines and for some reason none of those "shit ton of problems/issues with multi-monitor support in X" come to mind.
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Fish may have legitimate reason for not wanting bicycle suitable for humans, however I would rather not use a bicycle based on the requirements of a fish.
Because you're not a fish. Your flaw is assuming you're superior, not different.
All of them do, in X.
For someone who works with logic everyday, you seem to have difficulty following simple true/false sentences. I never stated the contrary regarding X.
Inaccessible to the user without additional software, nearly unusable with said software, and in conflict with all other possible desktop enhancements due to lacl of design. How typically Windows-like.
In linux, every software is additional, so in that regard is the same. There is a long distance between "cannot" and "its not good enough" - for a guy who proclaims himself an engineer, you seem to lack precision in your statements.
It does not matter. I am an engineer, and my configuration of a desktop is conducive to complex engineering/software development work, therefore my requirements are legitimate, and Windows' inability to satisfy them is a flaw. Just because there are plenty of other engineers who have never seen anything other than Windows, does not mean that they do not suffer and do inferior job, or live shorter, more miserable lives, because of the deficiency of the environment forced on them.
You're probably the most desktop-happy person I've
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It does not matter. I am an engineer, and my configuration of a desktop is conducive to complex engineering/software development work, therefore my requirements are legitimate, and Windows' inability to satisfy them is a flaw. Just because there are plenty of other engineers who have never seen anything other than Windows, does not mean that they do not suffer and do inferior job, or live shorter, more miserable lives, because of the deficiency of the environment forced on them.
You're probably the most desktop-happy person I've ever come across. I know, you can't even conceive the idea that other people - equally bright or brighter than you - opt for different things, or develop in different environment, Just because you probably work surrounded by monkeys, it is naive to assume everyone that doesn't agree with you is one.
Actually it's funny that you make such a claim. Every environment I worked in where I started using Linux had people saying "Damn, how come I can't do that?". Every site has had a percentage of their technical staff switch to either Linux or MacOS over Windows. Currently, I use Redhat and Fedora, the guy next to me uses Ubuntu, the 2 people opposite of us run MacOS. The other 2 guys with Windows have already submitted requests to move to Ubuntu. Hell, I have my mom running Fedora and she loves it. She
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Every site has had a percentage of their technical staff switch to either Linux or MacOS over Windows
And switched one set of problems by others, because no software is perfect.
The point is, that most people only know Windows. That is not the same thing as Windows being better.
The whole discussion wasn't about "most people". It was about specific flaws and their impact on productivity. I actually use Windows as a desktop because not only X has some issues that make me unconfortable (one of them is font rendering), but also because I have almost no need for *nix GUI programs. Everything I need related to *nix is a terminal away, and with multiple flavors (Linux and BSD). What advantage would I gain in using
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I'll bite... I use windows XP dual monitors at work and Gentoo Linux dual monitors at home. Both setups are nvidia video cards.
Work: I use the nvidia config utility to give me viewports. These are not as nice as the ones in XFCE4 mainly as they have been grafted in, and many windows apps don't like them, they do work. Multi-monitors are setup using windows builtin tools for that. Main screen on the left, secondary on the right. This means I need yet another third party program to mangle backgrounds so that
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Also should have added, that in both cases both monitors have different resolutions, which makes windows even harder to use well. I'd still like a third monitor. (hopefully when I get a new work laptop).
Re:WOW!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not to bait you but you didn't actually debunk his post, are there any Win users here that use multiple monitors to give us a comparison?
No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Here's a little glimpse:
- Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
- Windows leaves much of the multi-monitor support to the drivers. if you have several display adapters they better work well together at the driver level or you won't get multi-monitor. At work we tried adding a second monitor to a Windows system (2008 Server I think) but the driver for the second card would only work with other drivers that had WDM support; which the main card did not.
- As of WinXP SP3 Windows does provide a nice built-in utility for manipulating mutli-monitor support when it is available, but it's very limited. Usually you'll get more functionality out of the driver tools (e.g. nVidia's ControlPanel) that will let you do a bit more. In no cases do any of those tools provide the flexibility of what Linux provides.
This is true even of Windows 7; and given the lack of differences for Win8 I would assume so there to - those from what I have seen, Windows 8 will put the Metro interface on one monitor and the Desktop interface on a second monitor by default; so you're dual-head display is now essentially a single head display for with two different environments on each monitor. Might be the only way to use Windows 8 without getting rid of Metro.
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No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Are you comparing Windows XP with a latest linux distro? Because I had problems for _years_ with X/Xorg and multiple monitors.
Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
None of the applications I use make sense being spread across monitors horizontally, maximized, so never needed it. Can you give me an example of such application?
Windows system (2008 Server I think)
Pick a 2009 Linux distro, install it on a laptop, and then span the desktop to another monitor, with different resolutions. Now try see a fullscreen movie on the 2nd monitor, and tell me about it. Or boot up the SO, plug an
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No longer a Windows user; but Windows does not have any where near the same level of functionality for multi-monitor support the Linux does.
Are you comparing Windows XP with a latest linux distro? Because I had problems for _years_ with X/Xorg and multiple monitors.
Not simply XP, but Vista and 7 as well. I've used all three; but I primarily use Linux. (My wife has Vista on her laptop, and I get to dabble with Win7 from time to time at work. But 90+% of my time is under KDE on Linux - Kubuntu for the time being, and Gentoo.)
For a long time you had to specifically setup your X configuration file to get it right. It was a pain to get right, but it did work very well once configured. Since Xorg 1.5 you don't have to specifically craft the X configuration file any longe
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None of the applications I use make sense being spread across monitors horizontally, maximized, so never needed it. Can you give me an example of such application?
A wide table in Excel/OO.calc, CAD. I agree with you though. Generally it's not needed.
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Seemed easy enough in 2003 with a couple of monitors and just kept on getting easier since. I think you need to pick an earlier date if you don't want to be caught out spreading bullshit.
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No longer a Windows user...
Ah well, then I guess you are well qualified to comment then.
or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors
That's over simplifying a lot.
The monitors can be set up more or less independently. They don't need to have the same resolution, and they can be positioned arbitrarily relative to each other.
The task bar doesn't get stretched out.
There are hotkeys for moving windows between monitors.
The desktop background isn't stretched out either.
Its hardly simply a really big
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No longer a Windows user...
Ah well, then I guess you are well qualified to comment then.
I wouldn't qualify myself as a Windows user any more as I used Linux all the time. That said, I still keep up with Windows (to a degree) as I still write software for it and such. (Mostly write the software using Qt, then compile under Windows to deliver; but I also have a number of Windows applications - Win32/MFC - that I help maintain as well.) So yes, having worked with Windows XP, Vista, Win7, Server 2003/2008, etc - I'd say I'm still qualified to answer.
or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors
That's over simplifying a lot.
The monitors can be set up more or less independently. They don't need to have the same resolution, and they can be positioned arbitrarily relative to each other.
The task bar doesn't get stretched out. There are hotkeys for moving windows between monitors. The desktop background isn't stretched out either. Its hardly simply a really big desktop with a few "viewports" onto it.
but applications can only min/max on one monitor
That's a feature not a bug. The desirability of the maximize button maximizing an application across multiple monitors of often different resolutions and arbitrary relative positions is pretty much nil. But if you want to stretch it across multiple monitors you can.
As I fully noted. But depending on what you want
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I'd say I'm still qualified to answer.
I'd say characterizing yourself as a "no longer a windows user" is somewhat inaccurate, wouldn't you?
But depending on what you want to do, that can very well be a bug.
If you REALLY want to do that, you can buy a 3rd party solution.
With Linux you have to configure X such that it makes the monitors one big desktop area; there is no option on Windows to do so save a few very special (and expensive) graphics cards with drivers that do it to make the marketeers happy.
What e
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I'd say I'm still qualified to answer.
I'd say characterizing yourself as a "no longer a windows user" is somewhat inaccurate, wouldn't you?
But depending on what you want to do, that can very well be a bug.
If you REALLY want to do that, you can buy a 3rd party solution.
Why should you need a third party solution? That's the whole point, and there are many that do use multi-monitor support in numerous ways. The Unix and Linux communities make far more use of multi-monitor than the Windows community; but they have also had better tools for it that are far more flexible for a lot longer.
Good to hear. They're catching up to the Unix world with much of that. KDE 3 (EOL'd several years ago) had multiple "taskbars" on each display years (10+?) ago; but Windows just gets it with Windows 8!
Meanwhile setting up multiple monitors on KDE3 in the first was a huge pain in the ass while I ran plug-and-play multiple monitors with windows 10+ years ago. I'm so glad Linux is finally just getting "plug-and-play" multi-monitor support that actually works. (well, we'll see if it actually just plug-n-play works... once distros start bundling it.) ;)
The DM developers (e.g. KDE, GNOME, etc) for a long time had no access to APIs that did that. It wasn't until udev+hald that some of that functionality to dynamically support it at the DM leve
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- Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
The maximize button maximizes to current screen, doesn't stop you from actually making the window span all by resizing it yourself.
- Windows leaves much of the multi-monitor support to the drivers. if you have several display adapters they better work well together at the driver level or you won't get multi-monitor. At work we tried adding a second monitor to a Windows system (2008 Server I think) but the driver for the second card would only work with other drivers that had WDM support; which the main card did not.
So you're argument is that you have a shitty card without drivers and you're complaining that it doesn't work? Seriously? Could you even use that card in Linux? I mean if it doesn't have a Windows driver what is the chance you're using anything other than VESA in Linux?
- As of WinXP SP3 Windows does provide a nice built-in utility for manipulating mutli-monitor support when it is available, but it's very limited. Usually you'll get more functionality out of the driver tools (e.g. nVidia's ControlPanel) that will let you do a bit more. In no cases do any of those tools provide the flexibility of what Linux provides.
Its always proper to compare a 4.5 year old release of Windows to a modern Linux distro isn't it ...
This is true even of Windows 7; and given the lack of differences for Win8 I would assume so there to - those from what I have seen, Windows 8 will put the Metro interface on one monitor and the Desktop interface on a second monitor by default; so you're dual-head display is now essentially a single head display for with two different environments on each monitor. Might be the only way to use Windows 8 without getting rid of Metro.
Then you
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- Windows allows you to either clone the monitors (e.g. presentation mode) or have one really big desktop that spans all the monitors; but applications can only min/max on one monitor; you can stretch an application to cross both monitors, but the max function provided by Windows won't do that.
The maximize button maximizes to current screen, doesn't stop you from actually making the window span all by resizing it yourself.
As noted in the original response.
- Windows leaves much of the multi-monitor support to the drivers. if you have several display adapters they better work well together at the driver level or you won't get multi-monitor. At work we tried adding a second monitor to a Windows system (2008 Server I think) but the driver for the second card would only work with other drivers that had WDM support; which the main card did not.
So you're argument is that you have a shitty card without drivers and you're complaining that it doesn't work? Seriously? Could you even use that card in Linux? I mean if it doesn't have a Windows driver what is the chance you're using anything other than VESA in Linux?
It has drivers. It just doesn't have drivers that support a certain Windows API that the other video card requires to do the multi-monitor support. It's not about bad drivers or lack of them; it's about how Microsoft implements multi-monitor and the fact that they leave it to the drivers to do the majority of the work unlike X windows which does it about the driver level.
- As of WinXP SP3 Windows does provide a nice built-in utility for manipulating mutli-monitor support when it is available, but it's very limited. Usually you'll get more functionality out of the driver tools (e.g. nVidia's ControlPanel) that will let you do a bit more. In no cases do any of those tools provide the flexibility of what Linux provides.
Its always proper to compare a 4.5 year old release of Windows to a modern Linux distro isn't it ...
Again, read the thread. XP was mentioned, but so was Windows Vista, Windows 7, AND Windows 8.
This is true even of Windows 7; and given the lack of differences for Win8 I would assume so there to - those from what I have seen, Windows 8 will put the Metro interface on one monitor and the Desktop interface on a second monitor by default; so you're dual-head display is now essentially a single head display for with two different environments on each monitor. Might be the only way to use Windows 8 without getting rid of Metro.
Then you need to learn how to use the control panel. Span the desktop properly and Metro will span with it. There pretty much isn't any truthful comparison in your entire post.
That's pret
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This is true even of Windows 7; and given the lack of differences for Win8 I would assume so there to - those from what I have seen, Windows 8 will put the Metro interface on one monitor and the Desktop interface on a second monitor by default; so you're dual-head display is now essentially a single head display for with two different environments on each monitor. Might be the only way to use Windows 8 without getting rid of Metro.
Not sure what you mean by lack of difference in Win8. There is very significantly improved multimonitor support in Windows 8: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/05/21/enhancing-windows-8-for-multiple-monitors.aspx [msdn.com]
There's a significant difference in the User Interface, but a very lack of difference in kernel space (e.g. drivers).
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The most common use case for me, is to have my laptop docked to a larger screen, where I have some applications running on my laptop screen, this could be a browser window on a laptop screen, e-mail client etc., and have my ssh windows open on the bigger screen, since code is more important to me, it gets the larger screen real estate. Linux, (maybe not Unity) but KDE, SUCKS MY BALLS for this
Funny that I do this same exact operation on my Linux laptop all the time with KDE. I have used this same feature on KDE since.. version 3.5 at least. It worked fine with an ATI Mobile chip, the intel chip, and now the NVidia chip. In Windows I have to use the cards driver set to make the same thing work in every case (Windows won't do this properly natively, or magically loses screen placement every few hours after coming out of a screen saver). In KDE, the control panel is all I needed with any chip s
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Yes, lets discount actual working remote desktop over even dialup,and lets trumpet outdated technology requiring a LAN
What the fuck? Come on now, X windows was built for remote connections. That was the reason scaling the resolution was difficult to do, because it changes the whole underlying infrastructure of X.
Terminal services basically stole every concept that X had since.. like.. the 1970s. X worked extremely well over dial up and LAN, and still does today. It's still more secure than MS products, less prone to MiM attacks, and has way more capabilities. Such as displaying an application or a full desktop, where
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Come on now, X windows was built for remote connections.
Yet, storing the backing store is optional and has to be supported properly on both ends ... and still doesn't work half the time. And it has no sort of built in caching of rendered data to limit redraws.
1970s eh? You realize it didn't come about until the mid 80s, right? And that the way computers work today as far as graphical capabilities is nothing like displaying in the 70s OR 80s right?
In fact, to go further.. MS had to buy a lot of technology from Citrix to accomplish anything at all with TS.
Or rather MS and Citrix partnered together to make WinFrame work ... and then later MS got tired of it costing 9
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I used to write apps against libX in the 90s and 00s, what are your credentials?
Oooh, I had a class in college too. In fact I wrote GUI apps for Windows in Borland Delphi (as well as apps in X, VUE, and CDE), but..to be honest I hated GUI coding and went to exclusively back ends.
Fanboi for Unix? haha, probably true.. but you are just as guilty as being a fanboi for MS. Face facts, without Citrix licensing MS would still not have any compression and optimization methods for TS.
The late 70s had some early graphics and experimental windowing systems, and started the development for
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Mac II wasn't released until 1987.
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I had minix in 1987 on dual crts :)
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Ahhhh...the VT100. Counts as a display in my book
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The other AC here is likely right. This possibly isn't an issue with KDE but in fact some annoyance with NVIDIA's twinview which actually does assume you only ever have two monitors max.
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You motivated me to give nouveau a go after a long absence from it. I'm impressed, performance seems excellent and I have all desktop effects working, plus two monitors. Using an GT220.
Thanks.
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So you have dual video cards and quad monitors, but you can't spare the resources for KDE? OK.
In my experience the RAM usage difference between Gnome, XFCE and KDE isn't very big.
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I mean, there really seems to be something cultist about calling KDE heavy.
My experience is exactly the opposite, KDE is (for a full desktop experience) less of a memory hog than old Gnome and the recent RC for KDE4.10 shows even more improvements.
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If the alternative isn't GNOME or XFce but instead "just" a window manager, then KDE is indeed far more resource-intensive than the alternatives.
Compare your stripped-down KDE with fvwm2, e16 or twm. Go ahead and leave out your launcher, desktop and everything: compare *just* kwin. It's far, far heavier.
When you need "Just a WM" it's better to avoid the DE-focused WMs.
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Not true. At least, not on any installation I've had since I started running Kubuntu in something like 2008.
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But even then, this 'need' to reboot or restart X only comes up when you want to run separate X screens in stead of TwinView which I consider the standard for a dual screen set up.
Like when I do a presentation with LibreOffice I get the editable file on the laptop screen and the presentation on the beamer, easy for all because that way any other things on the laptop screen remain private.
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