How can I set a second screen (DISPLAY=:0.1) as the default gnome display?

Question

Due to various reasons, I have my main monitor set as the secondary display in xorg.conf. I would like to have gnome initialize metacity, gnome-panel as running primarily on :0.1, instead of :0.0. Is this possible at all?

To clarify, this is a laptop with its LCD turned off. My main monitor is connected to the VGA out and is driven by the nouveau driver for NVIDIA; a secondary monitor is on a displaylink usb-vga donverter. The seconday monitor is set in xorg.conf as the primary display (no way around it).

I can do things like DISPLAY=:0.1 gnome-terminal to run applications on the main monitor. My question is whether it is possible to do this (GNOME-) system-wide.

Solution 1

Maybe the following thread is a partial solution (at least for the panels): http://www.uluga.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1114767

Solution 2

You might be able to put export DISPLAY=:0.1 in ~/.gnomerc, depending on gnome-session version and possibly distribution.

Comments

[karthick87]

Disable the built-in lcd