X Power Tools

Chapter 4. Advanced X.org Configuration

Multi-Screen Configuration

Some people just can’t get enough—at least when it applies to screen space. Many users can productively benefit from more screen space than a single monitor can provide.

It’s fairly easy to configure the X.org server to support multiple screens on one display, if you have the hardware. In fact, if you get the X server to configure itself, it will do a reasonable job of setting up a multi-screen configuration if it detects multiple video cards and monitors.

To configure or tune a multi-screen setup by hand, take the following steps:

1. Create two (or more) normal Screen sections and the corresponding Device and Monitor sections in the xorg.conf file. Ensure that each screen has a unique identifier; in the following example, I’ve used the identifiers ScreenA, ScreenB, and ScreenC.

2. Add both screen sections to the ServerLayout section, numbering the screens starting at 0:

	Section "ServerLayout"
	        Identifier     "Multiscreen layout"
	        Screen      0  "ScreenA" 0 0
	        Screen      1  "ScreenB" Below     "ScreenA"
	        Screen      2  "ScreenC" RightOf   "ScreenA"
	        InputDevice    "Mouse0"            "CorePointer"
	        InputDevice    "Keyboard0"         "CoreKeyboard"
	EndSection

Notice that Screen0 is positioned to 0 0, but Screen1 and Screen2 are positioned relative to Screen0. The positioning keywords available are Above, Below, RightOf, and LeftOf; the keyword is followed by the quoted name of one of the other screens. (There are also other ways of positioning screens; see Section 4.4.)

When you start ...