Ubuntu: Gutsy Gibbon Dual Head Monitors Working!

After my last attempt being somewhat less than desirable, I decided to give Gutsy Gibbon another chance. This time, rather than installing from the downloadable live CD, I decided to try the update via Update Manager (from Feisty Fawn).

One other difference – and I’m guessing it’s a key difference – this time I unplugged the VGA cable to my external monitor before starting the update process. I did not reconnect my external monitor until after Gutsy Gibbon was fully booted and running.

I followed Mike O’Conner’s advice which he left in a comment here earlier. For convenience, here’s the link to Intel’s instruction – which Mike had reported on.

So:

While still on the laptop screen (and the external still unconnected) I typed:

xrandr -q

and got:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 1280 x 800
default connected 1280×800+0+0 0mm x 0mm
1280×800 60.0*
1280×768 60.0
1024×768 60.0
848×480 60.0
800×600 60.0
720×576 60.0
etc…

Notice – no information about any other moniter. xrandr thinks the only monitor is called “default”.

I then reconnected the second monitor and restarted X (ctrl+alt+backspace).

After the reboot, I immediately saw my second desktop – all correctly positioned with the correct resolution. But typing xrandr -q at the prompt on the laptop screen still gave me exactly the same information.

I then typed xrandr -q at a prompt on the external monitor’s instance of X and got a different set of data – this time, with no information about the first monitor’s configurations. The bad thing – xrandr is reporting that the external monitor is also known as “default”. This will keep me from following the intell instructions – since it seems that xrandr needs to distinguish the two (common sense) but the X Window’s way seems to be to have completly independent instances running simultaneously.

The only kink in that logic that I can see is that, even though X Windows doesn’t allow me to drag windows or applications from one monitor to the next – I can drag icons from one to the other. …interesting. that has to be a clue – - but I’m not sure to what.

the up side:

The up side is that I really don’t care right now. I’ve finally gotten to upgrade to Gutsy and my monitors are working.

dream config:

It’s silly that I should have to even suggest this to the Ubuntu team – but I want to be able to drag running application from one monitor to the other.

mouthing off:

This notion of having X Windows running multiple instances doesn’t seem to support that – and I’m wondering if that means that the errors and troubles that so many Ubuntu users have been having with setting up a dual head configuration could be due to a bad design that simply needs to be scrapped and redesigned.

thanks for all who’ve commented and offered suggestions, links, and assistance!