Multihead in KDE 4.2.2

I have dual head xrandr setup here. I really would like new windows, krunner, logoff widget and etc to start at (or be placed on) the current screen. By current screen a I mean the monitor that the mouse pointer is on.

Thank you for working on these important (for me at least) features of kde.

Hi Aike, I believe I have already mentioned this in one of the bug reports. I have an external HDMI monitor that just starts blinking when used with its maximum (and unfortunately, optimal) resolution. I am not sure of this but if I set its resolution to less than or equal to (at least the width), then it works ok. An example follows:

My laptop screen has an optimal resolution of 1440x900. The external monitor has an optimal resolution of 1600x1200. So ....

-- if I set the external monitor's resolution to 1600x1200, it blinks madly whenever some window is on it, and especially maximized!
-- if I reduce the resolution to, say, 1400x1024, things get better. However, as expected, this results in either reduced clarity of the external monitor or smaller display size on it.

Please note that the above does not happen if I use it in VGA mode rather than HDMI mode. Of course, VGA mode is like using a CRT monitor with as much blurred display.

My hardware is:
HP Compaq 6530b laptop / Intel GM 915 display
HP LP2065 20" external monitor

This happens in every distribution that I try to install on it. Currently, I have installed :

1. openSUSE 11.1 + KDE 4.3 (unstable)
2. Mandriva 2009.1 + KDE 4.2.2
3. Chakra (Arch Linux) + KDE 4.2.2
4. Kubuntu Jaunty + KDE 4.2.2

All the above installs have different versions of Xorg as well as Xrandr, I think.

A gui config screen for Kephal would be a good start in me trying to see what's happening since krandrtray does not help.

Aike, it's really great, that you are going to tackle those issues.
I am trying this multi head feature once in a while and never got to work popperly. It would be great if I could send you some of my issues.Where do you think is the right spot to put them: bugs.kde.org?

Peter

You should make your posts to show fully on the planets. Because it got cut of in the middle with out any warning ('read more...' or something would have been nice).

Welcome to the planet!
The stuff you are working on is very important since a lot of people use multiple monitors and in linux the support for that is damn crappy... don't get me started on it >_<

Keep up the good work!

The timing for this blogpost is incredible, as this hits the spot for exactly what I have been struggling with since acquiring an external monitor for my laptop.
See : http://forum.kde.org/kde-4-2-1-on-multiple-screens-t-40652.html

What currently happens in 4.2.1 is that plasma crashes if it's started without the external screen attached and there are widgets/panels placed on that external screen.

I have not yet filed a bug report since I'm not yet on 4.2.2, but an additional wish that would be nice on top of what you mentioned in your blog, would be if one could have a menu option to decide which screen should be primary when connected, and also to have an option to disable one screen when another is connected. (ie when a laptop with a really small screen is docked, turn the laptop screen off and make sure the panel and everything appears on the external *only*.

I assume that would also call for a per-monitor plasma setup, so that widget and panel locations are not completely messed up when going from a 15" laptop screen to a 32" external monitor and back.

Thanks again for your great work on this feature!

There is a setting under window behavior -> activation -> active screen follows mouse. (translated from german, dont know the exact wording) If you check that, at least new windows should always appear on the screen the mouse-pointer is on. This also makes the krunner-dialog appear on that screen.
The logout-dialog is not affected by that, that might need to be fixed, i'll look into that...

There's also other "offenders" though. Especially firefox seems to not like putting popups on the "current" screen sometimes. I dont think there's much we can do about that, though (except for maybe filing a bug-report on the firefox-site)!

Yes, bugs.kde.org is the perfect place, make sure you search for duplicates first.

:-)

Akregator shows a "read more" underneath my post, are you sure, you didnt just miss it?
As for the complete post appearing, i dont really know how to make drupal do that (without having the complete post appear on my frontpage as well). Any ideas?

That crash should be resolved in 4.2.2.
For the other things: I will blog about some of the more "advanced" features in the next days. There are plans that go in those directions, but i'm unsure when that will actually available in KDE...

Unfortunately i can really not imagine how any part of the KDE stack can cause this behavior. Also, i think there is still an open request for more information in the bug-report you mention.

:-)

support for more than 1 video cards coming?

I'm really happy to hear you are working on it. Is a UI to configure Kephal on the 4.3 feature plan (if it is, but it doesn't get finished for 4.3, you can always move it to 4.4)? What is the display configuration KCM, if not a Kephal configurer?

I thought that RANDR defines events for added monitors so it possible to auto-detect them? If not, how does the kded popup when I add a beamer work?

Last question - is there an API for apps to be notified (assuming added monitor detection works) of the new screen? It would be cool for apps to be able to automatically put 'peripheral' windows on a second screen - in eg Digikam, if it is running while I plug in another monitor, it would offer to put its LightTable on that screen so I can use all my screen real estate at once.

Thanks for your work, man!

Multihead is getting better in KDE4. It is already much better than in GNOME (at least GNOME 2.22, which is the last I used).

I'm very glad to see that task manager now actually shows only the current screen's tasks if asked to do so. In 4.2.1, it used to place my screen 1's tasks in screen 2's task manager and vice-versa. :)

Thanks again! :)

Good to see these improvements. Great multi-monitor support is really useful.

There is still one issue, although it is as much plasma-related as mulit-monitor related so I do not know if it is within your power to deal with:

Bug 184162: Plasmoids do not scale properly with activity size on dual monitors:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=184162

There is brainstorm idea that could reduce the complexity of a lot of these little fiddly things

http://forum.kde.org/changing-virtual-desktops-per-monitor-t-39358.html

The last comment someone says this has also been submitted as a bug

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107302

I think this could make things with multi-monitor much simpler but then I might be biased because I submitted the idea.

Just wanted to thank you for fixing the panel bug on the extended monitor. I use that on a daily basis.

mobile intel(r) 965 express build in graphic card on Compaq Presario v6500 with acer P223W screen :: tested on Kubuntu Jaunty and Intrepid with KDE 4.2.2 :: works beautifully on Vista

plugging in external monitor does nothing, restarting system/X starts laptop monitor with two black thick (200px) rails on the left and right hand side, basically it makes a square from the wide screen.

it worked somehow better prior 4.2.2, I mean the resolution wasn't optimal, everything looked stretched but at least display region was adjusted according to the size of the monitors. also it seems like on Vista the resolutions for both monitors are more optimal. don't know, every time I manually change resolution, for the optimal one, on one screen the other goes beyond x or y axis.

sorry I put it in here but these reports on bugs.kde.org... i just lost hope they're even being read.

I have been hoping for something clean and simple for proper multi-head support. This is great to hear that you are working on this as I use two screens for my home desktop.

So far my experience with kde4 in general and dual monitors has been a good one.

I'm using a dual head nvidia setup (laptop) and my only problem is that when I attach my second monitor at work it doesn't get turned on until I restart X.

It seems it detected fine as the mouse now moves over the single monitor boundary correctly, but the monitor itself remains asleep.

Not a huge problem, just kill X and log back in, but I guess it would be nice if it just fired up when it was found.

Peter.

You should be able to use multiple cards just fine with xinerama. And once xrandr has support for that, it will work that way too. Not much else we can do about that.

It's not on the feature-plan and i'm pretty certain, i wouldnt be able to make it till hard freeze.
I will start working on an ui in playground, so we can get it in good shape for 4.4! :-) I'll also blog about how to configure kephal using it's xml, so that some of the features can be explored along the way...

Well... xrandr does define those events, but at least on my intel-chip they dont fire when something is connected! It's possible to poll for such events, but that seems to cause major breakage on some systems... :-(

There is a lib that can be linked against which emits signals upon any change. The lib also has a fallback, so that it works even when kephal is not running.

:-)

You should really either open a report on bugs.kde.org or head over to the forum. That's the only way to keep track of it...
Make sure to include the output of:
xrandr --verbose
in the request on either page!

:-)

Sounds like a signal gets lost somewhere along the way. Could you please open a bug-report on bugs.kde.org against kephal? And include the output of:
xrandr --verbose
before and after plugging in a monitor!

:-)

Hi,

Two days ago I started writing my own plasmoid to manage xinerama configurations...I have a dual-head configuration both at home and work and I was tired of launching manually both xrandr scripts to set them.

It's only a base plasmoid, but I pretended to add some graphical configuration to set the xinerama.

Another planned feature is to recognize different configurations and apply them automatically.

I tried kephal auto-detection but it only sent the signals after launching xrandr...so I wrote a little dataengine to keep track of monitor changes, I think it's not very good/performance but at least for me works. Maybe in future release we could improve it.

Here is the project's page:

http://code.google.com/p/xineramoid

I'll add it to kde-look as soon as I finish some features/appearance.

You might want to check out playground, there is a dataengine to interface with kephal. Also, if your hardware doesnt cause trouble when polling xrandr-state you can enable polling in kephals configuration-file:
~/.local/screen-configurations.xml

Most of the replies have been about 2 monitor setups, I run 4 monitors off a quad-head ATI card at work and was wondering if anyone else has had success getting more than 2 monitors to work under kde 4.2? Right now I've just got the first 2 displaying as a big desktop setup and 3, and 4 are grey with the black X for my mouse.

No it isn't. I have KDE 4.2.2 with one external monitor attached, with teh panel on it.
If I boot my notebook without the external monitor, plasma still crashes.

Waiting for 4.2.3??

Ivan

For me plasma does not crash when the external monitor is not attached.
Have you opened a bug-report for this, so we can track the problem down?
:-)

I dont have hw like that to test on, but in theory you should be able to make an extended desktop with all four monitors. Or is that not supported by the drivers?

I'm going to install KUbuntu 9.04 in some minutes, I hope those bugs I had with 8.10 are forgotten forever... That I can't move panels to other screens was one of the major things because of that I used 8.04 until today. We'll see what happens....

Hi,
I encountered a problem with multihead in after latest update in KDE. When I turn off external screen windows from another screen go outside the screen so cannot be sean or reached by mouse. I have to use Alt+tab to select hidden window, and a key shortcut for "Move window" to move it back on my screen. Its quite annoying. I've reported a bug already: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218186