Gustavo Lacerda

thanks... but it's not being found, in either case.

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xuande.livejournal.com

Oh, it's a laptop! I didn't realize that before. You can probably just search for that model of laptop. It's rare for a given model to have options for different graphics cards.

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stepleton.livejournal.com

can't you muddle around in /proc to determine this information? Back when I used Linux, when graphics adaptors plugged into a PCI slot, /proc/pci was the place to look.

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The way to get linux working on a dual-monitor setup is:
1. Backup all your data.
2. Donate the computer to a good charitable cause.
3. Buy a mac.
4. Buy a couple of monitors.
5. Install a linux image under vmware.
6. Copy your data over.

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is that the *easiest* way? what about the cheapest?

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(a) yes.
(b) time is money.

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Or, really, time is all you have in the world, don't waste it on annoying things. If you *enjoy* hacking around to get this to work, then go nuts.

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My supervisor is offering me a Mac, but I've been less than enthusiastic about it. I've always found the Mac annoyingly designer-ish and confusing.

Can I get a more conservative GUI?

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Basically, the mac OS always works on the mac hardware. You get exactly that, you cannot get more, but you can't get less either. As a corollary, you benefit from every question of "can I maybe tweak this to ..." being immediately answered with a resounding no, so you don't waste time trying. The UI is the mac UI, you can't get anything else.

Windows mostly sorta kinda works on everything. The UI is exactly the Windows UI, which is usually a poor simulacrum of the mac UI.

Linux works on nothing. But if you find the right config file, download the right drivers, and recompile the kernel exactly just right, it will support your all-but-latest-generation gadget. You have total freedom to choose any UI you want, as long as it's free. This includes a poor simulacrum of the windows UI if you'd like it, but there's lots else too.

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rdore.livejournal.com

Linux worked without all the crap you described for me. Although when I bought my laptop, I did change the configuration to have a better supported wireless card. I also ended up with a (new) sub four pound laptop (not a netbook) for $800 a year and a half ago, a price you can't get close to with Apple even today.

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In terms of purchase price, yes, Apple is pretty expensive. But it impresses the girls! At least, Canadian girls; US girls are harder to impress. And you have to get the latest greatest thing, and they'll only be impressed for the first couple months.

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stepleton.livejournal.com

1. Get a mac.
2. Install MacPorts
3. Install whatever linuxy software you want.
4. Avoid using the Mac interface. Run X11.app in fullscreen mode with Gnome or whatever.
5. Gradually realize that the Mac stuff works better.
6. Assimilation.

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demarko (from livejournal.com)

agreed, MacPorts is particularly excellent when you want something like that.

and then you realize Mac stuff is way more awesome

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shhh... you're not supposed to tell him about 6.

(what you describe is *precisely* what happened to me. After I simply couldn't get linux to read the data off my camera, I bought a mac and installed fvwm2 on full-screen X11... and now, five years on and 5 macs purchased later, I cringe whenever I need to fire up an X app)

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demarko (from livejournal.com)

a) (re: designer-ish) get over it. Macs actually had an interface design team, I've met them. Linux UIs were engineered, that's unfortunate.

b) (re:conservative GUI) no, but there's a GUI that works rather well, which is more that can be said about practically every released, stable OS out there. could there be a better UI? yeah, you can always make a better UI. But if your supervisor is offering you a Mac, take it

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http://users.livejournal.com/_wirehead_/

i got it working by editing xorg.conf but i'm not on that machine atm. i'll try to look up what i did later and let you know. is this a laptop or desktop? if the former note that the graphics card may not be capable of running high enough resolution for dual monitors.

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this is a laptop.

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nvidia-xorgconfig should autogenerate a config file. I currently have dual display working on both my laptop and my 2 desktops (work and home) with different monitors, cards and heterogenous resolutions.

After that, follow the Arch Wiki Page on NVIDIA to set up dual display http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA.

Similar for ati -- if using fglrx, there is a binary in /opt/bin which will generate a good xorg.conf. The default driver is a little harder but works.

It took me all of 5 minutes of searching to get dual display working for nvidia. ATI took a little longer.

If you give me machine specs, I can send you an xorg.conf (unless ofcourse you have a bleeding edge new ATI machine... you will have better luck using your computer as a paper weight).

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and yes, I forgot, if you are a GUI kind of person and don't wish to edit xorg.conf, you can use nvidia-setting once you have started up X in the default configuration. Here you can set up dual monitor, resolution etc (basically the same config panel as windows) and it will update you xorg.conf. Its a little messy (the merge with an xorg.conf with other custom changes can go awry) but I've rarely seen it fuck up so badly that you cannot trivially fix it (it very carefully generates backups of your config etc.)

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If you have neither (and have an Intel card) then I am not really sure (havn't used intel graphics in a while). You can find out what card you have by running lspci as root. It should display your PCI bus topology and you should be able to find your video adapter.

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00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 01)
02:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
02:06.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)
02:06.3 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 SDA Standard Compliant SD Host Controller
02:06.4 Communication controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 GemCore based SmartCard controller
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5753M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 21)
10:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

does it show my video adapter?

The "Display Controller" is "Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME".

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Yep.. you have a 945GM Intel Graphics controller.

This might help -- I havn't used an Intel adapter myself in a while. Maybe others can help you:

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics

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Oh and I should say... if you have a recent enough version of xrandr, simply doing xrandr --auto should work in a lot of cases (unless you are using identical VGA monitors and their DDC info is misinterpreted by your adapter).

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You mean it should activate the external monitor, and give me a dual setup?

I just tried xrandr --auto, but nothing happened.

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http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2

This should give you a rough idea on how to use xrandr. xrandr --auto should "automatically" give you multimonitor support as long as use have a proper virtual frame buffer defined. Look at the example xorg.conf in the link above and that should help. You can run xrandr -q to list out what displays X thinks are currently attached to your computer. The displays that are currently active will have a "*" next to one of the refresh rates.

Here is mine laptop output (with no external monitor):

ksubrama@chimera ~ $ xrandr -q
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1400 x 1050, maximum 1920 x 1080
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DVI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected 1400x1050+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1400x1050 60.2*+
1280x1024 59.9 60.0
1280x960 60.0 59.9
1280x854 59.9
1280x800 59.8
1280x720 59.9
1152x768 59.8
1024x768 60.0 59.9
800x600 60.3 59.9
640x480 59.9 59.4
S-video disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

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