Hi there I am quite new to linux.. however I have been working long enough to have dumped Windows entirely.

my challange.. plugging in a external monitor(samsung SyncMaster 931BW) on my mac v4.1's mini dvi port... running hardy
I am having trouble getting my head arround the way to set it up
I have gone through the xrandr wiki and know that the monitor is the vga the laptop the LDVS and the dvi port is TMDS.. I also understand.. defining the virtual space is the xorg file.

my problem is this..
I can't seem to get the screens to go next to eachother only above or below and doing that ....it still doesnt work correctly.. I am used to windows is this sence.. and is strugling making oput how to set it up.. here is the xrandr screen print..
___________________________________
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1440 x 900, maximum 2048 x 900
VGA connected 1440x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 410mm x 257mm
1440x900 59.9*+ 75.0 59.9
1152x864 75.0 74.8
1024x768 75.1 70.1 60.0
832x624 74.6
800x600 72.2 75.0 60.3 56.2
640x480 75.0 72.8 66.7 60.0
720x400 70.1
LVDS connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 286mm x 179mm
1280x800 59.9*+ 60.0
1280x768 60.0
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3
640x480 59.9
TMDS-1 connected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
1280x800 60.0
1280x768 60.0
1024x768 60.0
800x600 60.3
640x480 59.9
TV disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)


and here is my xorg.conf
_________________________________________
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Virtual 2048 900
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

if I set the Virtual to 2048x2048 the screen is a mess and you can not read anything on the screen. so that is why i set it to 900 so I understand it needs to be 2048 for it to display correctly side by side..

right now both screens is in the same place on the virtual space.. and my samsung shows a edge to the right and to the botom of the screen.. the size of the mac screen..

any Ideas.. I figure Im close.. but i am missing someting..

I do not know if this helps, but when I set linux up on my system (when I had the Averatec AV3270-EE1 running Slackware Linux 12.0), the system seemed to recognize the monitor (I believe it is a Dell monitor VGA, I am not certain) without problem. I think that it is because my computer could use 1024 by 768 for a screen dimension on the laptop monitor. I believe that the Dell monitor also was able to see that, but I believe that there was something about the udev thing on Linux that registered it as an input device when I turned on the computer.

Could it be that udev may be what you need to look into? I do not know, but it may be. I hope this helps