Setting up a second monitor

[Antony Gelberg]

Daniel Carrera wrote:
> Antony Gelberg wrote:
> 
>> You need xinerama.  This should help for starters. 
>> http://www.paralipsis.org/2006/01/enabling-xinerama-in-ubuntu/
> 
> 
> Hmmm... looks coplicated. 

Why?

> I'll try to help here and ask intelligent 
> questions...
> 
> Step 1:
> -------
> Quote: "First, assuming you have managed to install the video boards and 
> connect the displays to them"
> 
> By "video boards" does it mean video cards? Is that the usual way to 
> have two monitors? To use two video cards? Or is there some sort of 
> splitter?
> 
> Jean, what setup do you have? two video cards?

The OP explained his hardware setup.  The internal display and external 
display are likely to use different BusIDs.  If you don't know what a 
BusID is, it's explained in the config file man page.  If people don't 
read the manual, things may well look complicated.

> Step 2:
> -------
> Quote: "one needs to run the program lspci."
> 
> The output of the 'lspci' command is not very user friendly. You can 
> improve this a little by running this modified command:

One can always man lspci to find out what the program does.

> lspci | grep VGA
> 
> 
> Explanation:
> 1. lspci prints information about everything on the PCI bus (video 
> cards, USB ports, etc).
> 2. 'grep VGA' extracts the lines that contain the text VGA.
> 3. The | is a "pipe". It means, "take the output from lspci and give it 
> to grep".
> 
> Could you run that command and post the output here?
> 
> The next step is to configure the X config file:
> 
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> 
> Configuring X is not for the faint of heart.

Enough with the FUD.  Are you suggesting that everyone who has 
configured X is strong as an ox?  For all we know the OP has configured 
it already.

> If you wish, I can try to 
> configure it for you (though I've never configured X to use two 
> monitors). Either way, make a backup of your xorg.conf file:
> 
> cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf ~/xorg.conf.backup
> 
>> NB The man command works for many config files as well as programs. 
>> Hence you may wish to peruse man xorg.conf.
> 
> 
> Ubuntu doesn't have a man page for xorg.conf. And if it did, I don't 
> think I'd recommend it to a new user. 

So you haven't read it but know not to recommend it.  The OP has been 
using computers for over 35 years, so let's assume that he's got 
something in the brain department.

> Man pages are not really intended 
> for that.

Man pages are not intended for what?  Like it or not, they are a pretty 
canonical reference for programs and config files in *nix.