** Adam Bower adam@thebowery.co.uk [2005-11-06 19:09]:
On Sun, Nov 06, 2005 at 06:54:29PM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Ahhh cool, that sounds more simple than the scenario I was imagining with a virtual desktop per display. Doesn't that sort of break things that want to run in fullscreen mode ? How does it behave if something (for example a game or dvd playback ) tries to go fullscreen (as in no window border) Does it just go fullscreen on the first display (desired operation) or does it try and span both screens.
It will go fullscreen on both displays as effectively they are 1 big display. I don't know if Xinerama fixes this or not... (i'd take a guess that the window manager would need to be Xineram aware) but most people I knew would resize the applications manually.
** end quote [Adam Bower]
I've just sorted out dual head with a nVidia MX440 and an old Matrox Millennium II. Under that setup with Xinerama most applications maximised and opened to a single screen. I seem to remember one opening in the middle with half on each screen, but non maximised across screens. This of course is two cards and not a single one. I've just replaced the MX440 with a FX5200 which worked dual head quite easily under Windows once I'd got my hands on a DVI-VGA adaptor. I've not yet sorted out the nVidia drivers to get it dual headed with Twinview though.
The idea that it treats the whole thing indiscriminately as a single screen is a little disappointing, but I'll know better when I've tried! I'm considering switching to X.org (currently XFree86 still) before I start configuring, but then again I've done it with my current setup so getting dual head sorted first might make sense (particularly as Debian testing hasn't got X.org in yet (oops, ignore that, somebody snuck it in while I wasn't paying attention!).
I just need some play time :)