Hopefully this is addressed (or has already been addressed) with Mir.
On 08/05/2016 10:33 AM, Harry Coin wrote:
In a regression in recent years, Linux has failed to keep a feature
well supported by its own earlier versions and all the various Windows
OSen: to simulate one large display as well with two or three possibly
dissimilar graphics cards as it does with one card with two or three
or more outputs. The cost of graphics cards with many outputs comes
at a great price and performance hit over more cards with fewer
outputs. This is becoming particularly pressing now that processors
support on-die graphics adapters in addition to PCI express graphics
slots supporting video adapters which almost never have the same
architecture as the on-die graphics.
The arrival of pre-supposed support for compositing has ended the use
of Xinerama, which at one time was the approach to this problem.
Many will be quick to note xrandr is 'the new way'. For graphics
cards hosting on the same card enough outputs for the entire system,
it works (though I've yet to find a linux system on which dragging
monitor icons when there are 3+ around the display configurator
works). The command line interface for xrandr is, well, its own
entire body of obscure knowledge. No real comparison to the simple
Windows display dragging and sizing GUI.
As a work around, because try though I did for days of searching and
attempting solutions to make it work all-Ubuntu: I'm forced to use a
Windows front end which does a flawless job with two low/mid-market
graphics cards acting as an X server to a headless Ubuntu back-end.
It's ugly. But without it no work happens. All because Ubuntu can't
manage more than one graphics card forming a large simulated single
display as once it did. Indeed there are vendor specific expensive
workarounds: Nvidia's SLI + base Mosaic, Radeon / Quadro multi-headed
'whole paycheck' graphics cards, etc. but Ubuntu shouldn't rely on
such things when others do so well with what was installed-- over
against Ubuntu upgrades that render a previously working system broken.
I urge whoever it is that sets goals in these matters to consider
this. Thanks for reading!
Harry G Coin
Bettendorf, Iowa
--
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