Hi All,

Brand new to this. Got Ubuntu installed with not much trouble, tho I found the install CD not as helpful as it might be. Anyway, I have three monitors and want to get them running, same as in XP. Is there somewhere I can read up on this? At the moment my worst card is on the lowest PCI slot, and as I understand it, that makes it always the default, but XP has no trouble with that. Ubuntu's monitor setup page tells me 'unknown monitor' and seems unhappy with the graphics abilities of the card, but lspci reports all three cards correctly, so they are 'visible' at least.

Thoughts?

The /etc/X11/xorg.conf can be edited to configured multiple monitors in a root terminal.

Saikee,

Tx, but I haven't the first clue how I'd edit that file. I presume there's a doc somewhere? I've seen a few examples on the net, but they all presume one is an expert. I am not.

The /etc/X11/xorg.conf available in Ubuntu is a simple. It can be modified using an editor.

There are loads of suggestions in the Internet. The basic steps are to repeat and serialise the entries of "Device", "Monitor" and "screen" to match the number of sets and then specify the way they appear in the "serverlayout" section. One can copy and paste the instructions from the Internet tutorials.

Changes in xorg.conf only take place if the desktop is fired up. If the instructions not satisfactory Ubuntu will try to correct them. Make sure you save a copy the original xorg.conf. I would do a twin monitor first before adding the third unit.

Yeah,

Working on it, I've had various half cooked things going on, with lots of crashes and hangs in the process. Man, this is one thing where Windows has it all over Linux. In XP all three of my monitors work fine with about 20 seconds of setup. All you do is position the monitors relative to each other.

Right now I have one monitor active, I can move my mouse cursor onto the other monitor (which shows just the wallpaper), but I can't drag anything over there. The cursor changes size, which tells me that some screen size defaults are not what I want. Hafta figure out how to change them.

'Tis the price of freedom from the Empire :-(

... oh, one other thing, 'lspci' reports one monitor as "00:0a.0" and in xorg.conf it's reported as "0:10:0" which bothers me a bit, don't know if I dare 'fix it'.

In Linux you have to get your hand dirty, able to understand the process and survive on generic drivers.

With a MS Windows you need a proprietary driver and have no clue what it does.

Linux will be in a different position if the hardware vendors provide the drivers.

Try to read this one here for example:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=221174

I think in default new Ubuntu has no xorg.conf, but IRC you can generate one automatically.
Anyway on that howto you'll see the devices and drivers - it is using "nv" for opensource nvidia - now depending
you might want to use proprietary driver.

Device sections define the bus and the driver, then there are Monitors - in your case, most likely identical
definitions where you just give frequencies. After this you define screen sections which link device and monitor
and finally in Server Layout you define the Desktop Layout - note Screen and then another Screen defining the second
monitor. Never did that for three screens but should be pretty similar...

Here is another example for three screens: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=670182 (obviously with some probs though)

Jykke,

This is a nightmare, there's so much info out there that's outdated or for the wrong distro or incomplete or just plain wrong. If I could find a complete, correct ubuntu approved .conf file that demonstrated a multiple monitor system I'm sure I could ape it. I keep being told to run xrandr, but no matter which monitors I have connected at the time, I always get:
"Can't open display", but lspci always reports any/all graphics cards accurately and I can always get X to run. So, if it works, how come it "Can't be opened" ??

Anyway, it was close but not cigar with Ubuntu, at one point I had all three monitors showing with the screen saver, but only one monitor actualy was usable.