I have to say, I'm rather surprised that nobody has said to download
nvidia's driver and read their documentation.
Yes, I wish it was open source, but it's not, but for what you want,
it's good to use anyway.
First, download their driver
http://www.nvidia.com/
Select download drivers, then on the page, under start here do
Graphics Driver -> GeForce and TNT2 -> Linux IA32 (or Linux AMD64 if
you are doing x86_64)
Currently, the driver is the 1.0-8762. So you would want to download
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-8762/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-8762-pkg1.run
and look at the documentation here
http://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/1.0-8762/README/
But I gave the other information for whenever that changes.
Since it's a dual head, the odds are you're going to want to change
things by hand.
There are two ways to do it.
There is the way that makes the monitors think they are just one big
monitor (although there are two backgrounds). In this documentation,
that is called "TwinView". This is nice because you can drag your
windows from one window to the other, or even halfway between.
The problem with this is when you don't have monitors with the same
resolution. Then things get really odd going from one screen to the
other when your screens don't have the same resolution.
TwinView is talked about in the documentation, I thought it was pretty
good documentation for that.
The other way is to set it up so that you basically have two instances
of X running, one in each monitor. This is nice because you can have
two different resolutions. You can play a full screen program in one,
and it doesn't affect the other. And various other reason's.
It's not nice in that you can't drag and drop windows from one to
another. And that firefox insists that it's already running in the one
window, so it won't start in the other. (I currently have Opera in one
window, firefox in the other)
Example - TwinView (trimmed out sections Files, and InputDevice's)
-------------------
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "fbdevhw"
Load "glx"
Load "record"
Load "freetype"
Load "type1"
# Load "dri"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Dell 1901FP (Analog)"
DisplaySize 380 310
HorizSync 30.0 - 80.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 76.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1600x1200"
HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0
VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX (generic)"
Option "TwinView"
Option "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1600x1200,1600x1200"
Option "SecondMonitorHorizSync" "30.0 - 80.0"
Option "SecondMonitorVertRefresh" "56.0 - 76.0"
Option "TwinViewOrientation" "RightOf"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Example - Separate Displays (trimmed out sections Files, and InputDevice's)
-------------------
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen 0 "Screen0"
Screen 1 "Screen1" rightOf "Screen0"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "Dell 1901FP (Analog)"
DisplaySize 380 310
HorizSync 30.0 - 80.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 76.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1600x1200"
HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0
VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX (generic)"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 0
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard1"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "Videocard vendor"
BoardName "NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX (generic)"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864" "1024x768"
"800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Videocard1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1152x864"
"1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection
--
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Troy Dawson [log in to unmask] (630)840-6468
Fermilab ComputingDivision/CSS CSI Group
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