Ubuntu 12.04 and unity.

Thu Apr 12 23:30:43 MST 2012

Sadly enough, no.  Somewhere around 8.04 days things started getting 
usable/stable with dual-display ala twinview, but true multi-monitor 
support has never been right with vendors or fully with linux either. 
I've been hacking around it for a good 6 years now as a full-time linux 
user.

Nvidia still cannot do more than 3 displays (windoze-only too, meh), and 
ATI finally did about 3 years ago with the Eyefinity6 cards.  They're 
caveat-ridden to begin with for driver support, but linux 
direct-rendering (compiz) cannot help but always render either my nvidia 
setup or ati's eventually to a death-spiral.  Any games like minecraft 
make it much worse, and accelerates its death.

Prior to the 6, i had 2x in twinview, then 4 displays (2x2 twinview's on 
2 nvidia cards) so I've seen ever iteration of bug with multi-monitor. 
Only once simply disabling compiz did I get a stable desktop, but I 
always missed the glitz of it from my work laptop.  Without compiz, my 
longest stretch was I think 8 months of uptime, on a desktop that I work 
at daily and nightly.  Compiz is definitely a problem, but I've no idea 
what ill effect it has on the fglrx driver over time, or how to even 
adequately relate data to show it.

My choices are mostly live without compiz (glitzy desktop) or spend 
another 350 bucks for the generation up from mine that can do all 6 in 
one.  Compiz has been fairly problematic since inception with linux 
drivers, I simply see no reason to believe it'll ever be fixed at this 
point.

To be fair, I have heard that xorg and prior x11 have enough limitations 
in architecture that it's coming time to simply abandon vs. fix. 
Wayland seems to be the bet, I just hope they invest some effort to make 
multi-monitor displays work right when it comes time.

-mb

On 04/12/2012 06:43 PM, Derek Trotter wrote:
> Multiple displays have been available for well over 10 years now. I
> would think the OS makers would have them figured out by now. I guess
> that's what I get for thinking.
>
> On 4/12/2012 15:45, Michael Butash wrote:
>> Precise 12.04 now, 64bit.
>>
>> It's not so much about installing 1 or 10, it's about not a one of the
>> "next-gen" desktops has been ever tested with more than one
>> framebuffer or very large ones it seems. I'm pretty sure the problems
>> are not apparent in a *simple* dual monitor, single framebuffer config
>> (i.e. nvidia twinview), but rather when you have DISPLAY:0.0 and
>> DISPLAY:0.1 to the system. Compiz and the ATI drivers I'm reasonably
>> sure is the root of all evil, and 5760x1200 x2 displays.
>>
>> Unity with 12.04, and the unity plugin itself can somewhat deal with
>> multiple framebuffers now, but nautilus still causes this lovely
>> "white screen" effect on my second monitor set when launched.
>> Gnome-Shell just freezes when logging in, getting a wallpaper, but
>> nothing more before having to flip tty's and restart lightdm.
>> Cinnamon's task bars won't render at all. Kde was so-so, but most apps
>> had issues with the displays between the giant render modes.
>>
>> Cinnamon's half-broken state is more or less what I use, overlaying
>> awn and cairo to make it usable, but when I get a chance I've been
>> meaning to put lxde on there to see how it fares.
>>
>> I really hoped when they announced on canonical's blog a good 6 months
>> or more ago now they'd finally bought their dev a 6-head display to
>> test with maybe things would finally get better, but apparently not.
>> I'd love what and how they're actually testing with it as I'm still
>> only sorta working here, and only because I have worked around
>> everything that defaults to simply broken.
>>
>> Sadly I'd tried win7 for the first time on a native dual-head display
>> with separate framebuffers the other day, and had a bunch of quirky
>> issues with mremote and some others dragging between displays. Guess
>> Linux isn't the only one not getting it, but at least I didn't have to
>> pay 200 bucks for the priviledge of debugging the os for the vendor.
>>
>> -mb
>>
>>
>> On 04/12/2012 10:00 AM, Dazed_75 wrote:
>>> MichaelB, what release are you running? I've installed something like 8
>>> Desktop Managers (DMs) on my ubuntu 11.10. I did this for a
>>> presentation I did on installing additional DMs.
>>>
>>> The problems I've seen are a few extra programs installed for the
>>> lightweight DMs, I now get the xubuntu splash at some time in startup
>>> and shutdown regardless of which DM I actually use, and some of the DMs
>>> don't play well with older projectors. Cinnamon works great.
>>>
>>> This thread is really about 12.04 and I have not tried these things on
>>> 12.04.
>>>
>>> On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 8:52 AM, Michael Butash <michael at butash.net
>>> <mailto:michael at butash.net>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I wish that were the case for me - gnome3 won't even launch with
>>> multiple framebuffers requiring me to drop to a tty and restart
>>> lightdm to choose something else. Cinnamon is broken on the same
>>> display as well. Sadly with the "new desktops", unity works the
>>> best, which isn't saying much in the least. It's like 2005 all over
>>> again, hacking entirely around ui short-sightedness.
>>>
>>> At this point the only thing gnome-ish left I can use is gedit and
>>> gnome-terminal, even nautilus is still broken on multiple displays.
>>> Other than that, avant-window-navigator and cairo-dock provide all
>>> my task and tray management.
>>>
>>> -mb
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 04/11/2012 09:56 PM, Stephen wrote:
>>>
>>> Well while i may hate unity, getting gnome2/3 working is a cakewalk
>>> now. install the one you want. logout and pick the one you want.
>>>
>>> you do end up wasting space with unity still installed, but at
>>> least it works.
>>>
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>>>
>>> --
>>> Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry
>>>
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