two monitors
 

hey guys,
i would like to have a second monitor installed to my PC, but i really don't know what to do. May somebody of you give me some directions about it ?

i have an standard PC, with a dual core intel procesor, 512MV RAM, fedora6 installed.

will i need a second SVGA card?
any other hardware ?
memory ?
how to install it ?
how many monitors can i install ?

thanks in advance,

hector

Depends on the graphics card, many newer cards will allow you to connect two monitors. If you don't have a suitable card then you can either add another one, or, probably easier, buy a new card that will allow you to have two monitors. I tend to go for nvidia cards as I find them easier to configure, but I have heard that the ATI drivers are getting better. So to answer your question properly we would need to know what card you have and what motherboard you have.

Cheers,
Phil

hi sniff,
thanks for replying. My mothercard is "ASRock 775i65G",and as i understand has a graphics chipset integrated. It has also an AGP slot, usefull to install a graphics card.

so , can i install a graphics card for two monitors in that AGP slot ?
which one ?
is there any for more than two monitors ?
is there any where, a howto document ?
what to do in linux ?

and a lot of similar questions :-( ....

regards,
hector

It honestly, was extremely easy, once I got past 1 major hurdle(which unfortunately, took me quite a while).

First, just from previous experiences.. I'd just stick with Nvidia for the time being. Yes ATI is getting better, but its not as easy as Nvidia.. yet. Also, you can try installing using two separate cards, but I'd probably recommend trying to find a dual head card, will just make it easier, no matter what slot you use(PCI or AGP)

I'm using a Dual head 256mb Geforce FX5200, PCI bus. Have two 19in LCD's.. one is an HP vs19e, the other is a Proview MA982K. It worked pretty much out of the box. Only thing I didn't care for, was that my display, was like one huge desktop across two monitors. Whereas, I wanted two separate desktops on each monitor. I screwed up my Ubuntu install and Xorg.conf file so many times during the trial and error process before posting, it would have drove a normal man to insanity... ;)

Once a poster helped me through it, it was pretty easy...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=534179

I just clean installed Feisty a couple days ago, and used my Edgy Xorg.conf in Feisty(saved it with my backup). After installing the appropriate Nvidia Driver, I replaced my Feisty xorg.conf with my edgy xorg.conf.., and rebooted and held my breath.

Worked like a charm, like I never changed OS's.

Good luck

IGF

If you were going for two monitors, I would suggest putting a new graphics card in the AGP slot that supports two monitors. Have a look at nvidia cards they are probably the easiest, there are loads of howto's around to help you get it working, gentoo wiki for example but you will be better off googling for one for your distro. Check the card has the correct connector arrangement for your monitors, or that if you need an adapter it will work etc (i.e. are the monitors DVI or VGA? Many cards are either 2xDVI or 1xVGA 1xDVI, best to check these things out before you find your monitors ain't going to work).

More than two monitors things get a little tricky. I would bet that the on-board graphics will be disabled when you put a card in the AGP slot (this is true in all cases I have come across). So either you find a PCI card to run extra monitors (you might loose 3D hardware support doing this, this was the case, not sure now), which might be difficult these days but there are a few about. Or you find a triple/quad monitor graphics card. These are rare beasts and tend to be expensive, and often they are somewhat lacking in 3D performance.

If you have your heart set on 3+ monitors then I would suggest getting rid of the motherboard you have and replacing it with one with 2 or more PCI-E slots. You will then be able to populate it with 2 relatively good nvidia cards, and the cards and board will probably be cheaper than a good quad monitor card.

Again I suggest nvidia because I have experience with them, ATI cards may work well under the new drivers I just don't know. Maybe someone will post to clear that up. I have a nice ATI card in my media computer that runs XP (so I can use 4OD) maybe I will try it out with linux someday.

The card I use is a Nvidia 7600GS (AGP), it runs two Sumsung 22inch monitors.

Cheers,
Phil

thank you guys,
i will try buying a nvidia graphics card for the AGP slot. At the moment i have a LCD monitor ACER 1916W 17inc, so i will get a similar one.

i'll be back ...

hector

Howdy all,

I have a question about dual monitor set up. When I plug in and turn on the second monitor then boot my system the first thing my computer does after POST is go to GRUB. That is where my problem begins, GRUB can't seem to handle the dual monitor set up. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

ToddM

umm.. GRUB does not need to use 2 monitors for Linux to