Mark Knecht posted on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 05:47:05 -0700 as excerpted: > On Sun, Jun 12, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Duncan <1i5t5.dun...@cox.net> wrote: >> Mark Knecht posted on Sun, 12 Jun 2011 06:47:37 -0700 as excerpted: >> >>> I've been using NVidia's TwinView where my two 1920x1080 monitors are >>> treated like one large 3940x1080 screen. This worked fine in 4.6.2 but >>> with the Gentoo update yesterday to 4.6.3 it's now treating the two >>> monitors like separate 1920x1080 screens. >>> >>> I'm looking but haven't found it yet. Is there a setting somewhere >>> that allows me to set it back the way it was? The >>> SystemSettings->Display&Monitor tab shows it's supposed to be a single >>> 3940x1080 monitor, so it appears to be more of a desktop issue than >>> purely a display issue. >> >> Try... kcontrol[,] hardware, display and monitor, multiple monitors. >> FWIW I believe you'll need USE=xinerama to get that kcontrol module. >> > For clarity, you're suggesting I add USE-xinerama to how I build my > machine? I'm happy to try it but it seems a rather radical step for a > minor KDE upgrade. > > OK, before I change USE flags Size & Orientation shows a single > monitor3840X1080 which is correct. > > Multiple Monitors has all 5 check boxes checked and shows : > > Display 1:0,0,1920,1080 Display2:1920,0,1920,1080 > > The Identify all Displays gives me a '1' on the left monitor and a '2' > on the right monitor. My mouse stops at the left side of monitor 1 and > the right side of monitor 2. However I have two separate desktops with > different wallpaper and (frustratingly) all new windows seem to open on > the right monitor, not the left monitor even though it says to open > unmanaged windows on Monitor 1. > > Please clarify about the xinerama flag (I've never used it) and I'll > give it a try.
In terms of the xinerama USE flag, equery hasuse xinerama tells me that kwin, plasma-workspace, and systemsettings (ksplash too, but I don't believe it's implicated here), are the kde-base packages that have the flag. Oh, and qt-gui is of course a kde dependency and has the flag too. There's some other non-kde-related packages too, but they're not apropos, here. So it's not like changing it and running emerge --newuse will trigger a rebuild of all of kde. And AFAIK, the packages where it is most critical default-use it, plus I believe it's set in some of the profiles. So if you don't have it set specifically, it'll still be on for at least those packages, and depending on your profile, may be on in general. But, if you have the multiple monitors kcm (kcontrol module), I believe that means it was on for the packages in question as I believe it's that flag that controls whether that module is built and installed. So if you have the module (as you do), you shouldn't have to worry about the flag, it was on for what needed it already. The nVidia proprietary drivers are as I believe are aware, a black-box I by policy won't have anything to do with, so to the degree that they're different and potentially making the situation more complex, as they may well be doing, you'll have to either work that end out yourself or find someone else to help with it. However, if the layout is working as it should with a normal native randr enabled X/KMS driver... There are two separate pieces of kde that are affected by multi-monitor setups, plasma and kwin. Both of these are still under quite active new- feature development and as a result are often buggy, particularly with multiple monitors as support for various multi-monitor features is only now coming online, and it's still not what one would exactly describe as stable, for sure. If one takes the view that solid single-monitor support is a prerequisite to good multi-monitor functionality, then this is only natural, especially if one also takes the view, as I definitely do, that 4.5 was the first truly normal-people usable version, what SHOULD have been 4.0, and supposes that a .0 would bring single-monitor support to full stability, 4.6 is then comparable to a 4.1 beta (where multi-monitor stability might be considered a 4.1 feature), with previews and sometimes working versions of the new functionality there, but not really ready for prime-time. Anyway... The multiple-monitor kcm under discussion is the kwin multi-monitor configuration. You mention having all five checkboxes checked. But if you read the options, they enable multi-monitor support for various things, when your preference as posted is to have them treated as if they were a single BIG monitor. Thus, it's likely that you really want some of these options UNCHECKED. That's why I was pointing you at this kcm, since it controls much of kwin's behavior in this regard, but didn't specify a particular option, as once you're there, I figured you could decide for yourself which options you wanted checked and unchecked. Of course, this kcm has been available for some time, since 4.4 or earlier I believe. However, as I explained, multi-monitor support is still under development and the way kwin supports some of these options may have changed, thus changing the observed behavior with an upgrade even if you didn't change any of the options yourself. It's also possible, actually I should say likely as I believe I remember seeing gentoo/kde project discussion to that effect in either the overlay git logs or the project meeting reports, that either the profile or USE flag defaults just changed, and since you hadn't specifically set or unset the xinerama USE flag yourself, when the defaults changed, so did the behavior you got. IOW, your versions of the above kde packages likely had the flag unset since you didn't set it, thus disabling xinerama support, but now that the default is to enable it, since it wasn't specifically disabled, you got xinerama support by default with the upgrade. If that's the case, simply unchecking all five of the checkboxes in this kcm should return you to very nearly the same state (kwin-wise) as before, except that now you have the options exposed to toggle as you wish, while before they were hard-disabled (which you could do again by setting USE=-xinerama and doing an emerge --newuse @world or whatever). That should take care of kwin, what about plasma? Unfortunately, I don't know of any such kcm or other location options for plasma. Thru 4.5, with xinerama enabled, plasma would create entirely separate activities for each enabled monitor (unless they were clone- mode, of course, displaying the same thing on both monitors). But as I said, multi-monitor support is evolving and becoming more fully featured, and 4.6 changed that, so they're separate backgrounds and can be set to separate layouts (desktop or folderview traditionally, search&launch or newspaper targeted at the smaller screen, typically netbooks and mobile devices, grouping and grid desktops as new options I'm not entirely sure about), but part of the same activity. Note that I've always had USE=xinerama enabled here so I'm not sure of the USE=-xinerama behavior, but with USE=xinerama at least, at least early in 4.6, a new activity would come up as a single unified desktop initially, but as soon as changes were made, it'd split into the two separate ones as described above (which it had always been with 4.5 and previous, except for bugs, of course). My reasonable guess, therefore, is that presently the only way to control plasma's multi-monitor behavior is with the xinerama USE flag. So here's what I believe that flag does: For the systemsetting package (kcontrol more accurately), it probably enables building that kcm. For kwin, it enables the features controlled by that kcm. For plasma- workspace, it controls split vs. single unified layout, including both background and layout type. (There's also ksplash but since that's only seen temporarily, it's not as important.) Now that it's on, simply unchecking the appropriate options in the multi- monitor kcm should get kwin back as you want it, but you'll probably have to rebuild plasma-workspace with USE=-xinerama to get it back to unified. So the minimal change necessary to get back to where you were is to set - xinerama for plasma-workspace in package.use and rebuild it, and uncheck the options in that kcm. Restart kde after that, and you should be back where you were... I think. Alternatively, set -xinerama in make.conf or individually for all three packages, and do an emerge --newuse @world. (Do note that if you don't routinely use --newuse, you might have a backlog of quite a few unrelated packages that want to rebuild as well. The usual advice applies... Always use --ask or --pretend first to avoid unexpected and unwanted surprises, and preferably, either put --newuse in EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS or use it regularly, in addition to the routine emerge --depclean and revdep- rebuilds, thus helping to keep your Gentoo system free of nasty bug- triggering cruft.) -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman ___________________________________________________ This message is from the kde-linux mailing list. Account management: https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-linux. Archives: http://lists.kde.org/. More info: http://www.kde.org/faq.html.
