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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 26 2019, @06:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the over-to-the-community! dept.

I need to install a new Linux/Gnu OS soon. The present one, Linux Mint (Mate) Debian edition no longer fills my needs. I run 4 screens with 3 X sessions. Mate worked great for this, then an update broke it to one screen. I tried Cinnamon but it won't even start on multiple X sessions. XFCE works but with some serious drawbacks although that may be caused by my current system. Enlightenment actually worked well until it started crashing and I had to restore the settings file. When it finally crashed so nothing got it to run again I gave up on it.

I need a OS with multimedia support, the ability to install programs that may not be in the repositories ( Mythtv ), and multi X screen support. I am also looking for a file manager that has something like Gnome scripts. I have fair command line skills. I presently have Nvidia cards but I will go shopping if I have to. I might try Xinerama but I usually watch one screen while switching the other 2's desktops. Also not having a menu on all screens would be a pain.


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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday November 26 2019, @07:23PM (3 children)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday November 26 2019, @07:23PM (#925029) Journal

    And how shall the computer figure out that the display device you just connected is a projector, rather than a monitor?

    Not to mention that treating the projector specially would mean that you can only ever use programs with it that are specifically written for that purpose. Oh, you want to watch a YouTube video over the projector? Too bad that your browser has no projector support. Oh, you want to demonstrate your new program to the audience? Well, better add projector support to it.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday November 27 2019, @12:04AM

    by RS3 (6367) on Wednesday November 27 2019, @12:04AM (#925169)

    Quite a snide response, going down a path based on an incorrect assumption.

    Please show me where I said it has to be hard-wired or hard-coded, never to be changed?

    It's simple- there should be a setting in the OS to let the USER decide on how the port is used.

    And maybe you're not aware, but there is communication between the computer and display device, including good old VGA. So there could be a mechanism that recognizes the display type, and either autoconfigures or allows the USER (remember that person?) to choose.

    I know, mindboggling.

  • (Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:29AM (1 child)

    by RS3 (6367) on Thursday November 28 2019, @03:29AM (#925536)

    I re-read my earlier post and I see where you misunderstood. I'm going through a lot of stress- my father passed away 10 days ago. I surely did not mean that a secondary graphics port should _never_ be used to extend a desktop. I just meant I think it's stupid that it is either a desktop extension, or unusable. There should be an option to use it as a desktop extension, or reserve it for special software, like video and slideshow projectors, or some other large-screen display. That way you never have to worry about an OS windows popping up either on a live screen, or worse, on a screen you can't get to because the resolution is out of range of the display on that port... but to change the resolution, you have to interact with that user interface widget. I've had to blindly grab around until I could find and drag it to the usable screen. Hope that makes more sense.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 28 2019, @07:32AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday November 28 2019, @07:32AM (#925584) Journal

      Yes, that way it makes more sense. But I think this should be possible by using the X multiple screen feature (that was in X11 since the very beginning, although for a different purpose), although I never actually tried. You'd assign your main screen to :0.0, and the other screen/projector to :0.1. The window manager would run on :0.0 only (thus all those windows would open up there). The special software would then in addition to :0.0 explicitly open the display :0.1 and open a single full-screen window there.

      What is missing is the specialized software doing that. I think it would not be hard to write, but nobody saw the need doing it. And of course, you'd have to set up everything manually (direct editing of configuration files), as no tool I know of supports setting this up.

      I'm also not convinced that sufficiently many people would want to use this configuration in order to write that specialized software or support that type of setups in the setup tools.

      But then, maybe it's just a chicken-egg problem: Nobody writes software using such a setup because nobody has such a setup anyway. And nobody has such a setup because the software supporting it doesn't exist. And of course the graphical configuration tools don't support it because nobody uses that setup anyways.

      My sympathies about your father; I know that situation.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.