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It's been a while since we ran a story about some facet of people's home computer systems and I got to wondering what kind of monitor setup other Soylentils have at home. (If you have multiple systems, feel free to enumerate each setup.)
For example, I run Win 7 Pro on a Dell laptop which has a Mobile Intel Core 2 P8700 Duo processor and which sports NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M graphics. Instead of using the built-in laptop display, I have a several-year-old Gateway monitor with 1920x1200 resolution @ 59Hz and 32-bit color. I do not do any gaming, so I don't need the latest graphic card/monitor.
Some time down the road, though, I'd like to get a new computer and am thinking about a multi-monitor setup. I'd like at least 1920x1200 across 3 screens, though I'd not mind it if I could afford 3 x 4K screens. I'd like it to be compatible with some flavor of Linux or *BSD, preferably without systemd. Does anyone here have experience with that kind of setup? What OS do you use? What graphics card? What monitors and resolutions do you run?
I know there are some gamers on the site, as well. Here's a chance to brag a bit about your rig!
And, of course, please share any horror stories and/or triumphs, too!
(Score: 2) by cockroach on Sunday August 21 2016, @10:29PM
My current setup involves an older PC (Core 2 Duo) with a recent GPU (Radeon HD 7700), two 4:3 screens (EIZO S2133, 1600:1200) and a Thinkpad X201 (with Coreboot and Gentoo). In theory, the PC (running FreeBSD) would use both screens but at the moment the GPU is a bit too new for that -- apparently newer drivers have just been committed but the ones from FreeBSD 10 don't do dual screens with my card, thus the second screen is currently connected to the Thinkpad (via VGA, for that retro feeling).
I used to run Debian on everything, nowadays most of my machines are on Gentoo or one of the BSDs, none of them run systemd.
If you want to get current hardware running with multiple screens Linux is probably still the safer choice but if you're willing to give them a few months to catch up, FreeBSD is certainly an interesting alternative.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday August 22 2016, @07:47PM
I find it odd that the card would have support for accelerated graphics without supporting two displays. I suspect Xrandr confusion. The way you set up multiple displays differs from xinerama.
Xrandr: 1 frame buffer
Xinerama: independent frame buffers,
I have yet to recover my example xorg.conf files illustrating the difference between the two. (I prefer xinerama because games are not able to clobber your lay-out. But it is slower.)