Dual monitor possible?

Brian McKee brian.mckee at gmail.com
Thu Oct 4 15:43:24 UTC 2007


On 03/10/2007, Ashley Benton <meggalen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi again
> I did what you wrote (update, upgrade...) It doesn't seem to have changed
> anything. The second screen doesn't seem to be recognized. When I did sudo
> nvidia-settings I would have been able to change the settings for the new
> card, no mention of the old one. I didn't change anything since it seems to
> work fine, and the screen that is not working (or at least not configured to
> work) is plug in the old card.
> While I was in the terminal it printed:"suggested packages:
> nvidia-kernel-source" Do I do "sudo apt-get install nvidia-kernel-sources" ?
> or is it no important? And is the command I would type OK?

Yes, that's the command you would use.  And no, you don't have to.
Suggested packages are just that - suggestions that may add additional
features or similar but in this case I don't believe they are
required.

Just so you understand what you just did - you've installed Nvidia's
own drivers on your computer instead of the free open source driver
provided by Ubuntu.  It didn't turn on your other card.  If your card
had two outputs then this was the easy way to enable that, but you
want two separate cards to work together which requires more work.

Installing the nvidia drivers is fine though - no need to undo what you've done.

Next step is to tell X that you have two cards.

Steve's email telling you how to alter the X config file is the right
way to go.  But, now you are using nvidia drivers you will want to
type 'nvidia'  rather then 'nv' on the lines labelled 'Driver'

nv = ubuntu drivers
nvidia = nvidia drivers

It would be helpful if you understood that X config file.  You might
try listening to this podcast episode
http://www.linuxreality.com/podcast/episode-54-xorgconf/

The most important part is to make a backup of your xorg.conf file now
while it's working.   You are probably going to do something wrong
along the way and if you just put it back then you'll be back up and
running again.

I guess the other part of this is to make sure you are ok working at
just a command prompt (e.g. hit cntrl-alt-f1 and log in there)
If you do break things you'll have to do at least some work there to
get things back up and running.

If that sounds like biting off a little too much all at once, then
don't be afraid to chicken out - Liam is right - this isn't beginner
stuff...

HTH
Brian




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