[lug] Linux for New User (Desktop OS)

[Davide Del Vento]

On Fri, May 23, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Michael J. Hammel
<mjhammel at graphics-muse.org> wrote:
> On Fri, 2014-05-23 at 13:11 -0600, Davide Del Vento wrote:
>> If you care about XFCE (which has poor support for things like dual
>> monitor, absolutely not recommended in case the user wants to use this
>> computer for presentations), I'd consider xubuntu LTS instead of Mint.
>
> Huh?  I use XFce exclusively on all my desktops, many with multiple
> monitors and on laptops which I use for presentations with external
> monitors.
>
> Multi-monitor support is less an issue with XFce than it is with a
> proper X configuration.  I use both nvidia and ati open source drivers
> with XFce and use it to configure connected monitors.  I don't have
> custom xorg.conf's on these boxes.
>
> Then again, I use Fedora and CentOS on everything so maybe its a
> distribution issue.

Thanks for the feedback, this is good to know.
My biggest (but not only) grief is about hot-plugging and resolution.
Does your install allow you to hot-plug a monitor (say, a projector
for a presentation), correctly and preferably automatically recognize
its optimal resolution, and not modify the resolution of the laptop to
match the one of the projector? And at the same time allowing you to
be either in "extended desktop" (or whatever is called: the one in
which LVDS and VGA/DVI/HDMI are different) or in "same image"
(rescaled, not cropped)?
If so, what version of X, xrandr and XFCE are you using?

Thanks,
Davide