it was premature anyway. …Priorities folks!

get dual monitors working seamlessly, THEN start getting fancy pants.

Funny you should say that. Gutsy Gibbon promised to deliver this very feature with the new GUI tool, which, it seems pretty clear, has been (nearly)universally dismissed as junk.

Keep at it. There is a sweet spot which I’m sure you’ll eventually get.

Now that you have one monitor working, keep your back ups of the best working file and continue making gradual tweaks.

…
If I could just get my windows dragging between monitors I would seriously do a jig!

With the help of a lovely forum, I figured out this dual screen issue…. Here’s the deal folks…. As simple as I can make it.
If you are using the Nvidia Drivers and Ubuntu Gutsy do the following to get two monitors to work on a laptop. Here’s how you do it in plain English. Before you start make sure etc/X11/xorg.conf is clean.

1. Download the Nvidia Drivers/Envy from the Add/Remove Programs. This requires some research to know which ones you need depending on your card.

2. Make sure you know both resolutions you are shooting for. If you have windows you can check there very easily. There’s a command out there for the terminal within ubuntu.

3. Set up your monitors just as you would in windows using ‘Screen and Graphics’, extending

4. Log out, Login…

5. Don’t freak out. My system was stuck stretching the primary monitor ac cross to the secondary monitor at a huge resolution.

Here’s the TRICK

6. open the terminal and type

sudo nvidia-settings.

edit the multiple display to mimic the one in screens and graphics.

Turn OFF Xinerama.

Click Save to X Configuration

Quit

Restart.

When you login you will get two screens that you can’t drag windows back and forth to but at least there’s two.

If you get that far successfully and are running compiz and emerald you’ll notice that your window title bars are missing on the new secondary screen. So solve this go into the compiz’s settings, make sure monitor “1″ is selected on the right, click on the Window Decorations panel where it says command, enter “emerald”.

Restart and you should see emerald.

There’s one more glitch I am working through….

One cube works on the laptop monitor and the cube works on the secondary but when you edit the number of columns for the workspace it only changes the primary monitor.

Hope this posting helps.

-cheers

In simple language (often forgotten)

For those of you who want the fix, do some research on editing the sections of xorg.conf . Some have said that you need separate mappings of device, screen, and monitor. others have suggested that you need to add subsections to the primary screen, thus adding secondary monitors from the primary. I really don’t completely understand this but I have learned that by using the Ubuntu interface to edit your monitor setup you are actually editing xorg.conf, so make sure you make backups. It took me a few days just to get the laptop primary display to work.

The next version of Ubuntu is supposed to have solved this problem, but I think It’s a pipe dream at this point to have everything go perfectly. Developers need to mimic the Windows interface or at least come up with something that works, this is something that should be built into the UI somewhere (system tray maybe??!) Hardware information in general is difficult to access and read in Gutsy. There are certain things users entering the Ubuntu world are going to expect to be there. SO…. We should continue discussing this stuff… And for the developers out there, bump up the ethics a bit please…. If it DON’T work, DON’T publish it. It’s wasting my time.

-pissed

LOL

Ok I had an ATI video card in there and it didn’t automatically set up the dual heads (as in, everything else worked on install of Gutsy, but not that) … I just assumed that it was still unsupported and went about my business, forgetting it

Now…..
Due to stability problems where the video card was a prime suspect, I swapped it out for my nVidia, and when I switched over to the proprietary driver, suddenly my dual head configuration sprung to life. I was astounded

It’s exciting to know that it can be done with ATI too, then!!
Is it worth me having a crack at doing it with the newer and more powerful ATI card, I wonder?…….

I’d never even heard someone suggest that it was possible.

Please instruct me in the ways of dragging

You can’t? Dual monitors works fine for me in Gutsy Gibbon and I never had any troubles dragging applications between monitors. I love that I don’t have to de-maximize windows to move them to the other monitor like you have to in Windows