[lug] Linux for New User (Desktop OS)

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Fri, 2014-05-23 at 13:40 -0600, Davide Del Vento wrote:
> 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? 

That's not my use case.  I don't hot plug.  My desktop monitors are
always connected and my laptop is usually off when I plug in the
external monitor, then I turn it on.

There is an issue with an external VGA forcing my laptop to a different
screen resolution (smaller than it usually supports).  That doesn't
happen with HDMI connections that I'm aware of.  It typically happens
when connecting some big TV to the VGA output of the laptop.

> 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)?

I have different sized monitors at home, both running HDMI.  The
resolution is different on each but both are fully extended across the
display screen.  I run a single desktop across both with a panel on only
one.  Effectively Xinerama though I don't explicitly configure that.  I
run a newer AMD APU on my main desktop.  Other servers are connected to
a single VGA display shared with a KVM.

I may or may not do the same with the laptop, depending on the
presentation I'm giving.  XFce has a UI configuration tool for setting
the resolutions of the connected monitors.  But I have to use either
ATI's or nVidia's proprietary tools to configure a spanning desktop.
Sadly, ATI's (re: AMDs) Catalyst drivers package is poorly structured
and isn't in Fedora 20 to my knowledge (I'm using F19 and earlier on my
Fedora boxes).  There may be tools for the open source ATI drivers for
configuring it.  I'm not sure what those are, however.

> If so, what version of X, xrandr and XFCE are you using?

X varies depending on whether its CentOS or Fedora.  Same with xrandr
and XFce.  But the issues you're talking about are related to the Xorg
video driver support.  Xrandr will only do what that driver allows.
Same with XFce.  I don't have the laptop handy (which is probably what
you want) to tell you specific package versions, but it's CentOS 6.5.

I find the open source nvidia driver to be fairly stable though I'm no
longer using it after upgrading to some AMD APUs.  The ATI kernel module
is broken in 3.13 for newer AMD APUs.  It crashes repeatedly.  But it's
fine in 3.12 kernels.  Note that I do NOT use compositing.  I have no
need for it.  Nor do I do any 3D or gaming.  Just plain ol' 2D desktops
for writing code.  

Hope that helps a little.

-- 
Michael J. Hammel <mjhammel at graphics-muse.org>