Please read the original bug report first (https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=247688).

Basically me and some other Gentoo users have the problem that MultiMonitor does not work the same as it did in 4.4.5. For some of us it doesn't work at all anymore.
Here is the gist of things

In 4.4.5 we all had xinerama disabled on compile time on the following
ksplash,systemsettings,kwin, plasma-workspace
We could set multi monitor support perfectly well via xrandr, krandr and the system settings module. Two things are important:
* A panel setup on the second monitor would stay there.
meaning if I run with only one monitor (laptop) it would be gone
If I reenable the external monitor it would be there again
* maximize would work on the separate monitors

In 4.5 without xinerama this is no longer the case. maximize would not work and although systemsettings, krandr would identify the separate screens KDE would treat it as one big display.
After enabling xinerama on all packages (read kde+qt) it would work for some of us but not all.
For me maximize did work but some behaviour is different
* the panel behaviour is different. when I disable the external monitor the panel would move to the first.
* Furthermore I have occasional artifacts which I associate with xinerama.
* notifications are no longer in the notification area but on the second screen in right lower corner
* with xinerama I have the multiple monitors view enabled in system settings, in 4.4.5 without xinerama this used to be disabled all the time. (read unavailable!)


What I would like to know (and all Gentoo users with intel hardware for that matter) is how to get my old behaviur back:
* multi monitor maximize
* panel on external screen being sticky there
* ability to dynamically switch from two external to internal one without loosing anything

In KDE 4.4.5 xinerama compile time was not needed to support this, is it now? If it does, it has some unwanted affects, as mentioned here.
if not what else is needed to make this work again.

Thanks
Mike

I gather you have checked with a new user and reproduced the regression there?

If so, you may wish to ( as you have the ability to quickly test patches as you compile KDE directly ) contact the KWin and Plasma developers to see if you could help them fix this.

We have had a bug open, but the KWin developer maintained that this must be a distro issue. So we would like to find out what it is that got wrong.

I didn't yet start with a different user, will do so when I'm back at my multi head setup tomorrow.

I suggest that you ensure you have the *full* content of kdebase/runtime installed.

Tested with a new user, same situation.

The good news is that with xinerama enabled, after starting once with a single laptop screen and then going to multi monitor it does work nearly as expected. It does not remember where the panel are supposed to be. And I still have artifacts.

The only thing I found not to be installed is policykit-kde which gets a compile error.

Same problem here but on Kubuntu 10.04 (with KDE 4.5 from ppa:backports)

I have nvidia and use their nvidia-settings to set up twinview. KDE (Display Settings) sees this as a single display with a resolution that is the accumulation of the two (one is 1440x900 the other 1280x1024 and KDE sees a single display with a 2720x1024 resolution), at least width-wise.

That's more or less what I need, aside from the fact that it 'really' behaves as a single monitor, which causes the following problems to me:

1. I've set Kwin to centre newly opened windows, which means that they now appear half on one and half on the other monitor (centred at the 'slit' that is supposed to link the two)

2. The panels span across the two monitors. I can't set a 'primary' monitor and have the panels only in one of them (checking the 'Make this the primary display for the X screen' in nvidia-settings, doesn't change anything)

3. Setting a video to full-screen puts it again half-and-half (I would expect it to become full-screen in whatever monitor the video happened to be in). Basically makes it useless for videos.

The way it is set now is perfect for a 'composite' screen (made out of more than one monitors). It doesn't server well cases like LCD+projector or laptop+desktop monitor, where you want them to be 'linked' but still independent (primary/secondary).

Ioannis

PS: 'Multiple Montiros' states: "this module is only for configuring systems with a single desktop spread across multiple monitors", which is strange, since that's what I have...

hi ioannis,

i was unable to find out if the kubuntu packages are built with or without the support for xinerama. do you know how I can find that out? if they are not i would no longer be the only one that sees this problem even if kwin is built with xinerama support.

is there already a bug-report for kubuntu? if yes, could you please provide the link to it?

roman

Unfortunately I do not know why this occurs.

Ioannis wrote:KDE (Display Settings) sees this as a single display with a resolution that is the accumulation of the two (one is 1440x900 the other 1280x1024 and KDE sees a single display with a 2720x1024 resolution), at least width-wise.

At least for the module this is the expected behaviour. Twinview results in one screen. The other points should not happen and in general do not happen. I - as a developer - use Twinview in my default setup.

It is possible that KDE does not get the change events. You might try to write your twinview settings into the xorg.conf and restart the X server.

torotil wrote:hi ioannis,

i was unable to find out if the kubuntu packages are built with or without the support for xinerama. do you know how I can find that out? if they are not i would no longer be the only one that sees this problem even if kwin is built with xinerama support.

is there already a bug-report for kubuntu? if yes, could you please provide the link to it?

roman

I'm sorry, I don't have that kind of information

mgraesslin wrote:

Ioannis wrote:KDE (Display Settings) sees this as a single display with a resolution that is the accumulation of the two (one is 1440x900 the other 1280x1024 and KDE sees a single display with a 2720x1024 resolution), at least width-wise.

At least for the module this is the expected behaviour. Twinview results in one screen. The other points should not happen and in general do not happen. I - as a developer - use Twinview in my default setup.

It is possible that KDE does not get the change events. You might try to write your twinview settings into the xorg.conf and restart the X server.

Confirmed! When saving the twinview setup in xorg.conf and restarting the X server, the Multiple Monitors module now sees this correctly and from my brief tests, it generally behaves as expected (all 3 points I mentioned are resolved)

So your guess seems right. KDE doesn't see the change. Any idea why? Do you have a fix for that? I don't always operate on that twinview mode, which makes it inconvenient when wanting to briefly switch to that.

I don't know if there is a kubuntu specific bug-report for this, but I'll update the kde bug report with my findings.

Hi all, I solved the problem after searching and reading around a lot of times...

My configuration is a laptop (1280x800) with a second monitor (1680x1050) connected to a docking station.

I hat the same problem as mentioned in the first post and in the corresponding bug-report. Enabling the xinerama use-flag didn't help, so I had to downgrade to KDE 4.4.5 again.

Now, I recompiled KDE 4.5 with the xinerama use-flag enabled and added the following section to my xorg.conf to enable xinerama setup there:

Code: Select all

Section "ServerFlags"
        Option      "Xinerama" "true"
EndSection


This configuration has the expected behavior for me. In detail, following works:

• Panel stays on one screen. When undocking, panel moves to the laptop-screen.
• One activity (cashew) per screen.
• Window-maximization possible on every screen.

Please try this configuration too, and if successful, let me know or post the solution directly to the bug report.

Adding Xinerama to the xorg.conf file is definately not the right solution as that in most cases breaks compositing.

mgraesslin wrote:Adding Xinerama to the xorg.conf file is definately not the right solution as that in most cases breaks compositing.

Thankfully I didn't know that. Otherwise I wouldn't have tried it Anyway it still works here as expected (compositing, randr, open-gl applications on both screens). I'm using intel-drivers.

Well, maybe it helps other users...