Dual Monitors In Ubuntu (xorg.conf driver; ATI card)

[update]
on 12.15.2007 I updated to Gutsy Gibbon and have dual monitors working!
[/update]

Last weekend I experimented with dual booting Ubuntu and XP. Long story – that didn’t work out well. So I decided to just chuck XP out the door for a while and see what happens.

That came at a small price of not having all the drivers working correctly – mainly in regards to my dual monitor set up.

After a few nights of trying a lot of things that I’ve found on the internets, I’m finally sitting in front of my two monitors –both of which finally have the proper resolutions and are unique instances of the X Windows UI.

The only (last) wish I have for the set up is that I want to be able to drag app windows across the two monitors. (and I want to enforce which monitor gets what (like when I plugged in my camera, the UI popped up on my laptop (smaller of the two) monitor and I couldn’t move it to the larger display.

Regardless, I’m pretty happy with the set up. It was in NO WAY obvious or easy – and I would have never in a million years guessed at all the things that needed to be done – so thanks to all the sites out there that helped!!

…the Monitor Resolution UI with both monitors showing separately.

The process was rather slow and required a lot of tinkering with the xorg.conf file. Here’s the current final version that I’ve settled on.

Section “Device”
# Crucial to give each Device a unique ID
Identifier “0 ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)”
Driver “fglrx”
# In my case, there’s only one PCI BusID
Busid “PCI:1:5:0″
Screen 0
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “1 ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)”
Driver “fglrx”
Busid “PCI:1:5:0″
Screen 1
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Laptop Monitor”
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
Identifier “Samsung Monitor”
Option “DPMS”
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Laptop Screen”
Device “0 ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)”
Monitor “Laptop Monitor”
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
# Despite not including any more modes, there are many more options in the GUI
Modes “1680×1050″ “1280×800″
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
Identifier “Samsung Screen”
Device “1 ATI Technologies Inc ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)”
Monitor “Samsung Monitor”
Defaultdepth 24
SubSection “Display”
Depth 24
Modes “1680×1050″
EndSubSection
EndSection

# Enabling the Xinerama caused problems every time -
# but it sounds like getting that working is the last step
# in having true interacting monitors.

#Section “ServerFlags”
# Option “Xinerama” “true”
# Option “DefaultServerLayout” “DualHead”
#EndSection

Section “ServerLayout”
Identifier “Default Layout”
Screen 0 “Laptop Screen” 0 0
Screen 1 “Samsung Screen” RightOf “Laptop Screen”
# DualHead means two monitors
Option “DualHead” “true”
Inputdevice “Generic Keyboard”
Inputdevice “Configured Mouse”
Inputdevice “stylus” “SendCoreEvents”
Inputdevice “cursor” “SendCoreEvents”
Inputdevice “eraser” “SendCoreEvents”
Inputdevice “Synaptics Touchpad”
EndSection

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• Dual Head video using Xinerama and fglrx
• AMD shows off new graphics chip powering up to 24 monitors at once