I just bit the bullet and installed CentOS 5 on my work desktop, and although I have two monitors and a card that supports them, I cannot get the display configuration to work with both as a continuous (spanning) desktop. I have tried using the correct (autodetected) monitor type (digital and analog), a generic LCD with 1280x1024, nothing works. Every time I set the configuration, the X server fails to restart and I wind up with single-head monitoring (duplicate displays on both screens).
Here's what I have for an xorg.conf file (now):
# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display
Section "ServerLayout" Identifier "single head configuration" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" EndSection
Section "InputDevice" Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "us" EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Videocard0" Driver "vesa" EndSection
Section "Screen" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Videocard0" DefaultDepth 24 SubSection "Display" Viewport 0 0 Depth 24 Modes "1280x1024" "1280x960" "1280x800" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" EndSubSection EndSection
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The strangest part is that system-config-display comes up with the right video card and the right monitor type, but I don't see either one here....
I just bit the bullet and installed CentOS 5 on my work desktop, and although I have two monitors and a card that supports them, I cannot get the display configuration to work with both as a continuous (spanning) desktop. I have tried using the correct (autodetected) monitor type (digital and analog), a generic LCD with 1280x1024, nothing works. Every time I set the configuration, the X server fails to restart and I wind up with single-head monitoring (duplicate displays on both screens).
What model of video card are you using?
On 5/1/07, Barry Brimer lists@brimer.org wrote:
What model of video card are you using?
Took me a while to locate this. I have an ATI FireGL3400 with two Dell 1707FP monitors. The configurator correctly identifies the monitor (well, the left one, anyway), but it shows "ATI Technologies In Unknown Device 71f2" for the video card (the second screen is a 71d2).
On 5/2/07, Mark Hull-Richter mhullrich@gmail.com wrote:
Took me a while to locate this. I have an ATI FireGL3400 with two Dell 1707FP monitors. The configurator correctly identifies the monitor (well, the left one, anyway), but it shows "ATI Technologies In Unknown Device 71f2" for the video card (the second screen is a 71d2).
Are you using the binary ATI drivers, or the default xorg drivers? ATI has horrible support, and their binary driver is just as bad. Do yourself a favor and get an nvidia card. Still a binary driver, but at least they actively support their product on linux.
On 5/2/07, Jim Perrin jperrin@gmail.com wrote:
Are you using the binary ATI drivers, or the default xorg drivers? ATI has horrible support, and their binary driver is just as bad. Do yourself a favor and get an nvidia card. Still a binary driver, but at least they actively support their product on linux.
I'm using whatever CentOS 5 comes with - the default xorg drivers I would guess.
I can't just get a new video card - this is my company's box, so it's their call on what cards to get with them. The strange part is that I was well able to limp along in CentOS 4.4 by telling s-c-d that I had a FireGL 3200 (I think - the 3400 wasn't supported) and two Dell 1704FPs (the 1707 wasn't supported then either), and it worked 99% of the time (except for my other thread about how it went flaky last Thursday and did work quite right again).
I would have thought that CentOS 5 was better about this, and the FireGL card is listed (but it doesn't work when I try to use it) and the 1707FP is supported (but not if I go for a dual head configuration), so ... ???
Thanks.
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
I would have thought that CentOS 5 was better about this, and the FireGL card is listed (but it doesn't work when I try to use it)
Listed where? Which chipset is that? ATI is actively ignoring Open Source development of their newer cards and their own fglrx drivers plainly suck.
So you are left with the vesa drivers, which is pretty high up on the suckiness scale also - but at least should work with every card. You're probably not even having 2D acceleration with that driver.
Try with the fglrx drivers - they might be that tad better than the vesa drivers are. And it seems to be your only chance to use both monitors.
Ralph
On 5/2/07, Ralph Angenendt ra+centos@br-online.de wrote:
Mark Hull-Richter wrote:
I would have thought that CentOS 5 was better about this, and the FireGL card is listed (but it doesn't work when I try to use it)
Listed where? Which chipset is that? ATI is actively ignoring Open Source development of their newer cards and their own fglrx drivers plainly suck.
They're listed in the system-config-display video card list, but I couldn't select them for some reason.
Try with the fglrx drivers - they might be that tad better than the vesa drivers are. And it seems to be your only chance to use both monitors.
The only ones I saw were for XFree86 - nothing for Red Hat or CentOS or SuSE or anything else - is there a chance those would work?
I was using the VESA drivers in 4.4 and they seemed to be okay for the most part....
On 5/2/07, Mark Hull-Richter mhullrich@gmail.com wrote:
Monitors really don't matter as much as the video card driving it, and (to reiterate) ATI sucks for support. If a monitor isn't 'officially' supported, you can always call it 'generic' and set the specs yourself. Video cards aren't nearly as forgiving, and newer ati cards have very poor support.
On 5/2/07, Jim Perrin jperrin@gmail.com wrote:
Monitors really don't matter as much as the video card driving it, and (to reiterate) ATI sucks for support. If a monitor isn't 'officially' supported, you can always call it 'generic' and set the specs yourself. Video cards aren't nearly as forgiving, and newer ati cards have very poor support.
It certainly looks that way!
Thanks.
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Barry Brimer -
Jim Perrin -
Mark Hull-Richter -
Ralph Angenendt