Ubuntu Screens/Resolutions Management - or the reason i still MUST use m$ windows

[Aurélien Naldi]

Le jeudi 13 décembre 2007 à 11:23 +0100, Daniel Bimschas a écrit :
> Hi Guys,
> 
> first I want to apologize if this topic has been talked about before
> (which is what I hope) but congratulate to all those great
> improvements Ubuntu made over the last years.
> 
> Now to my problem. My problem's I love Ubuntu and Linux in general,
> but I really CAN'T use it for one simple reason: Screen Detection and
> Configuration. On every new Ubuntu I do a download and try if it got
> better, but I was disappointed every time.
[...]

This problem is indeed well known and a solution is in the work: the X
server included in the latest version of ubuntu included a new version
of the xrandr extension allowing to add and remove screens on the fly.
Graphical tools to take advantage of it are still lacking but good
progress hapened since, and I hope [hint] to see something like urandr
included in the next version.
The "problem" now is mostly a driver one: intel graphic cards are well
supported, AFAIK, the opensource radeon drivers has support too but the
ATI and nvidia binary drivers don't yet (I may be misinformed about the
fglrx one and a solution is rumored to be coming for the nvidia one,
maybe before 2009...)

I'm suffering from this as well, and quite happy with what I have seen
from xrandr1.2 so far ;)
<somehow related rant>
to be honnest my last experience with windows XP and multiscreen
configuration was MUCH worse than the quirks I had with the new xrandr:
at least with xrandr I could reliably change the configuration and come
back to the previous state...
</somehow related rant>

best regards

-- 
Aurélien Naldi <aurelien.naldi at gmail.com>