On 2015-09-18, J. Roeleveld <jo...@antarean.org> wrote:
>
>> There's a few reasons you might want more than one screen. Primary one
>> is two heads and two video cards with different resolutions and dpi.
>> Xinerama and big desktop et al will use the lower setting for both.
>
> Actually, this desktop has xinerama enabled in USE-flags. IOW, I'm
> assuming I am using Xinerama on here. I can change the resolution of
> either screen and it all still works. (apart from the weird look of
> windows on the other screen)
But can you set DPI independenty for the two monitors? I'm guessing
not, since you mention the "weird look of windows" -- that's probably
due to use of the wrong DPI on one of the monitors. With multiple
screens, you _can_ set DPI correctly for two different monitors.
>> Some folk have 2 screens just because they've always done it that way
>> for years and don't want to change
>>
>> These days the usual case is one video card with more than one output
>> so you connect identical monitors to each. For that, one big desktop
>> makes sense.
>
> Same with laptops, all laptops I've used in the past 5 years all had
> the option to add a 2nd display and use that. Even with differing
> resolutions, it works the same way. Plug it in, change the setting if
> necessary (kdesettings does a good job with that) and I have 2
> screens where i can move windows back and forth. It's great for
> presentations. Can open a text-file with the passwords on the laptop
> screen and copy/paste them from there onto the big screen everyone
> else sees.
Except for the "moving windows back and forth" it works the same with
dual screens except you can properly set DPI for both of them.
There is one other disadvantage of having multiple screens that I
forgot to mention. Apart from the gtk-3 selection brokenness, there
are some buggy X apps which just plain refuse to run on multiple
screens simultaneously (Firefix is one). They were apparently written
by MS-Windows programmers based on the assumption that a computer is
always used by exactly one person to run exactly one program on
exactly on screen. Most other X apps are properly written and support
multiple screens just fine.
--
Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! Spreading peanut
at butter reminds me of
gmail.com opera!! I wonder why?
