I'm getting tired of having to change my display from
clone mode to side-by-side every, single, blasted time
I login. It needs to be persistent and it ought to
default to something more useful than "clone" anyway.
That's a pretty useless config. The only time it isn't
is when the secondary screen is a projector. Not often
for most folks, I'd guess. Anyway, it used to be a
permanent setting and now it is not. What do I do?

Oh, also, I have to set it several times for it to actually
take effect. The first is always a no-op and kills the system
settings window. The second must be different from the first
and requires confirmation. If I first selected what I actually
wanted, it didn't take effect and now it is the second selection
so I have to do it again.

Finally, what's with this auto-maximization thing? Just because
I bump the top of the screen with a window I'm moving does
not mean I want the window maximized. STOP IT. This is weirdo
changed behavior. I do not want some brainless program deciding
for me what I want. If I want maximum, I'll select it, thank
you very much. MicroSoft got it wrong, too. Please do not
copy them, unless maybe there is a selection, "do everything
the MicroSoft way". I won't select it.

Do you have "krandrtray" running on startup? It will apply your display settings as made in System Settings.

How would I know if I have "krandrtray" running on startup? It seems like I'd want it to, so how do I "make it so"?

But now a curiosity question: Why would this be needed anyway? It would seem to me that if I go to the trouble of going through several layers of menus and futz with such a setting, why ever would that selection not be honored at the next login? It is totally unclear to me why it should be necessary to run a completely obscure program to restore something I went to a lot of trouble to set up.

Answer to part 1:

if krandrtry was running it would show in the systemtray

to see if a programs running at start: type in konsole "pgrep krandrtray" OR you could run ksysguard and filter for "kandrtray"

to have a program run at startup: systemsettings -> system administration -> starup & shutdown -> autostart -> add program

I have a nvidia card and with the nouveau driver I had exactly this problem.

I had to change from clone mode to twinview mode in krandtray after each login. I found no way to make the system (or krandtray) remember the setting.

Only the proprietary Nvidia driver and nvidia-settings solved the problem.

64 bit openSUSE 11.3

olav wrote:I have a nvidia card and with the nouveau driver I had exactly this problem.

I had to change from clone mode to twinview mode in krandtray after each login. I found no way to make the system (or krandtray) remember the setting.

Only the proprietary Nvidia driver and nvidia-settings solved the problem.

64 bit openSUSE 11.3

Totally correct. The nouveau driver is NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME!! My ultimate solution took more than just adding the Nvidia driver because it would not configure the second monitor. I then had to copy over the configuration from the previous install. That got me a working xinerama desk top, but the mouse and keyboard did not work. Finally, I booted into init 3 and took the keyboard and mouse settings from the auto-configury and put them into the file configured from the previous release. Not for the feint of heart. Not for the mass public. This stuff is GETTING WORSE, guys!!! Not better.

It is not in the power of KDE to ensure that X is properly configured, and has the correct drivers installed. That is something that is the responsibility of your distribution.

bcooksley wrote:It is not in the power of KDE to ensure that X is properly configured, and has the correct drivers installed. That is something that is the responsibility of your distribution.

Also true. KDE's responsibility is with the "personal settings -> display" code. It is KDE's responsibility to retain settings from one session to another without users having to know a priori that they need some weirdo "krandrtray" thingey to accomplish it. I also think it is reasonable to expect that there be some diagnostic capabilities in there so that your average user can figure out a direction to proceed instead of drifting rudderlessly.

You are certainly correct about the driver choice, though: the KDE project has little direct influence over the choices made by the distribution.