dual monitors and wallpaper

[jdewberry]

Hi Forum,

I know this topic has probably been covered, but I'm stuck w/out the ability to get wallpaper to span the whole of my desktop 3200x1200.

Here's my xorg.conf

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 1.0 (root@jdewberr-lnx) Thu Aug 6 14:18:12 EDT 2009

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
Load "extmod"
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from data in "/etc/conf.d/gpm"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: edid, VertRefresh source: edid
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "NEC LCD2070NX"
HorizSync 31.0 - 92.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 85.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "Quadro FX 570M"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Device0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "TwinView" "1"
Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0"
Option "metamodes" "CRT: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +1600+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
EndSubSection
EndSection

Here's my make.conf:
# These settings were set by the metro build script that automatically built this stage.
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example.

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe"


#USE="kde X aac acl acpi aim alsa apache2 apm bash-completion bindist bluetooth bzip2 cddb cdr clamav cracklib crypt cups curl curlwrappers dga dri dv dvd dvdread encode examples firefox flac geoip gif gpm gtk gtk2 hal ieee1394 imap ipod ipv6 jpeg kerberos ldap lame libwww mailwrapper mmx mp3 mpeg msn musicbrainz mysql mysqli ncurses netboot ogg openal opengl pam pdf perl php png posix python quicktime radius rdesktop readline samba sasl savedconfig session skey snmp soap sockets sse sse2 ssl symlink tcpd threads truetype usb vhosts vorbis win32codecs xcomposite xinetd xml xosd xvid yahoo zlib asterisk wifi -gnome -kde -qt3 -qt4"
USE="kde cups ssl arts mp3 xmms xinerama X alsa dvd cdparanoia dvdread bonobo bzip2 curl dts exif fam ff mpeg firefox mplayer jpeg cdrw cdr flac glut gmp guile xvid gtkhtml gtk idn imagemagick java lcms mng nptl nptlonly opengl ppds ruby nsplugin tcltk tiff hal samba usb xml2 svg xosd glitz quicktime real symlink dbus xulrunner emerald xcb kde4 qt3support"


# source mirrors
#GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mysterymachine.cisco.com/gentoo/"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo http://gentoo.mirrors.tds.net/gentoo/"


MAKEOPTS="-j5"
FEATURES="distcc parallel-fetch buildpkg"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="*"
#FEATURES="parallel-fetch buildpkg"

# some portage configuration(s)
PORTAGE_NICENESS=19
EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--jobs 3 --keep-going --load-average 3"

CCACHE_DIR="/var/tmp/ccache/"
CCACHE_SIZE="2G"

ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel"
VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"
INPUT_DEVICES="mouse keyboard"

# layman
#source /usr/portage/local/layman/make.conf



I recently rebuilt, everything is working fine but would really like to have my collection of dual display wallpapers

I am not able to have a wallpaper span the desktop in both KDE and XFCE so I wouldn't think what I'm hitting is desktop environment specific but more in overall config.

Thanks!

[BitJam]

I am able to have background images span two monitors (total 3520 x1200) in kde-3.5. I'm using Nvidia TwinView like you. I think it may be hopeless with kde-4. I don't remember if I could do it with xfce4 or not. The last time I checked, background images in kde-4 have been rather borked since August so you can't even split a large background image and have half on one monitor and the other half on the other. In fact, there has been a fairly long history of kde-4 being rather borked on dual monitor setups. I think this might be due to their insistence that each monitor is a separate "workspace" or something. At some point they claimed it was caused by not having devs who used dual monitor systems.

On one hand it doesn't make much sense to suggest that you emerge kde-3 (from the layman sunset repository) just to get your background images to work but on the other hand, I could not find any other DE that handles background images so well. If you just want to test if bg images to span both monitors, Fluxbox should do the trick and it emerges quickly. I grabbed the Fluxbox config from the antiX distribution which came with some nice themes and a decent default menu.

[Hammett]

I am stuck in the same situation. I use Xfce and I can't make the wallpaper to span across the monitors, I have to use two separete wallpapers. I even tried to use Esetroot to draw the wallpaper to the root window, but as soon as this happens, Xfce overrides it with the two wallpapers selected in the config menu

AFAIK, the only WM that can do this is Fluxbox.

I wish developers could offer users what kind of desktop they want instead of imposing their own ideas of how a desktop should be. It really makes me nervous when I cannot make such a simple thing other WM can do without any fuss.
_________________
I don't fear the people. I fear the demon inside them.

[NetBSD]

disable xinerama or rebuild without xinerama. OR you could just cut the image in half and put each half on each monitor

[Hammett]

If I disable xinerama, will windows still maximize at the current monitor? Or will span as well across both monitors?
_________________
I don't fear the people. I fear the demon inside them.

[jdewberry]

I used this script w/no success:
==============================
cat bin/randWall.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

#my $pic_path = "/home/jdewberr/Img";
my $pic_path = "/home/jdewberr/Img/2x/";

sub get_selected_pic($)
{
my $sel_pic = $_[0];
my $fname;

if(opendir(DIRFH, $pic_path)) {

while(defined($fname = readdir(DIRFH))) {
if($fname eq "." ||
$fname eq ".." ||
$fname !~ /\.jpg/) {
next;
}
if($sel_pic == 0) {
# We select the file which appears
# at the sel_pic number
return $fname;
}
$sel_pic--;
}

closedir(DIRFH);
} else {

}

}

my $tot_pic = `ls $pic_path/*.jpg | wc -l`;
my $sel_pic = int(rand($tot_pic));
my $sel_pic_name = get_selected_pic($sel_pic);

if($sel_pic_name =~ /\.jpg$/) {
`feh --bg-center "$pic_path/$sel_pic_name"`;
# `qiv -t "$pic_path/$sel_pic_name"`;
}
==============================


original error

no imlib2 loader for that file format

[WastingBody]

One could always use Gimp to split the background apart and set them to each monitor. I did that for a while to get two different wallpapers on Gnome.

[Mad Merlin]

Like you, I'm using KDE with dual monitors (for 3200x1200), Twinview, and recently moved from KDE 3.5 to 4.x. KDE 4 has some good points, but dual monitor support isn't one of them, it's actually pretty lousy (and a large regression from 3.5) on that front. You can't actually display dual monitor wallpapers in KDE 4 like you could in 3.5 [1]. I gave up and stuck with the default wallpaper, which gets repeated on each monitor. I'm also annoyed that you can't span the panel (what used to be called kicker) across both monitors either [2]. If you care about either, you should vote on the linked bugs.

[1] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167558
[2] https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167825
_________________
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!

[PlasmaPhil]

That issue is causing me headaches.

This weekend I finally had to upgrade to KDE4 since Mr. Suominen keeps kicking out packages without a forewarn which where essential for my KDE3 desktop (gtk-engines-qt to mention one) and they don't get added to sunset overlay. Emerge -u world didn't even work the last weeks, I had to upgrade everything manually, which cost me hours.

Now I'm stuck with a desktop environment which somewhat looks better, but if you take a second look is bloated, obviously wastes space (my control bar is ~50 pixels in height, anyhow two lines of task buttons look ugly thanks to their nifty round curves and lots of unsused pixels around them), does stupid things (toolbar icons are dynamically arranged by the width of their text beneath, imagine what "Inhalt der Zwischenablage einfügen" looks like) and which has a feature set that reminds me of an early KDE3 and not a system from ten years later. I expected it to get better and not far worse.

I have a collection of over 120 dual widescreen wallpapers from Digital Blasphemy, constantly growing thanks to a lifetime membership. Should I go ahead and make split files out of all of them?! And then the random generator selects one half of picture X on the left screen, then ten seconds later another half of picture Y on the right screen? This is totally ridiculous.

Does anyone see a chance that this will get fixed? "This bug has been confirmed by popular vote", yeah. Go for it ...

[krinn]

[PlasmaPhil]

[allistarM]

[PlasmaPhil]

Just as Mad Merlin above, I would like to encourage everyone to vote on

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=167558

There's at least some activity, and the more votes and utterance (well at least some helpful for the case ) we get, the more chances are that this will be fixed some day. Also spread the word on other boards!

Thank all of you