I have used multiple monitors for several years. Until recently I used 3, but with the recent upgrade to Slackware 13.1 I can't get the 2 X drivers to co-exist any more, so I am back to 2 monitors.

Left monitor is an LG 1920x1080, and the right monitor is a HP 1280x1024.

Now, I used this configuration (well, previously there was a 3rd 1280x1024 monitor) for several years with KDE 3.5, which was quite happy to allow me to stretch my desktop across all all 2/3 monitors. I treated the 3 displays as 1 single display and it all worked quite happily.

Along comes KDE 4.5. Hmmm, well I grappled with these Plasma things for quite some time, and now I have managed to find a use for them (I have 6 virtual desktops with a different Folder View on each). It's actually quite handy as I can group links to files, folders, apps, urls etc.

HOWEVER, my big problem is that the Plasma desktop does not respect my multiple monitor setup and will only apply to 1 physical display. I settled in the end for having the same Plasma desktop on the left and right displays however I am still extremely annoyed that it won't stretch across the 2 screens.

I would be happy if you could at least seamlessly stretch my wall paper across the 2 displays. I take lots of panorama style photos and for years I have stretched these across my multiple monitors.

I understand there are "issues" with getting the Plasma workspace to work across multiple monitors, however, please, at least let us stretch the wall paper across both. KDE 3.5 could do that! Anything less is a big step backwards.

Please, if your going to tell me to split my wall paper into 2 pieces or some nonsense like that then save your breath, and at my next upgrade we will part ways and I will head off to another desktop.


Cheers,
Scott Pitcher

anyone using xinerama and KDE suffers with a suboptimal setup. i won't detail it here. but i suspect the number of KDE developers who use only one screen is 100% .

this begs the question - is there *any* display adapter that can drive four flat panel displays (minimally 1600x1200) while presenting one uniform frame buffer to the X server? so that xinerama isn't needed? while still giving the user the option of limiting maximization to one physical display or all four displays?

The problem with stretching across multiple monitors is that it doesn't work when the monitors are different resolutions. This is probably something that, rather than being handled in plasma itself, would need to be handled at the screen management level, so plasma only thinks it is seeing one screen. You can submit a brainstorm idea about this if you wish.

An alternative would to be to have a wallpaper plug-in that detects which screen it is on and then displays the correct portion of a panoramic picture automatically, or that lets you set which part of a picture you wish to display.

i have always had multiple screens with the same resolution. if that were the only reason, why isn't there an option to remove the physical screen limitation?