How to set up two screens in one vertical-one horizontal formation?

Question

I've tried to set up that configuration a lot of times, but I'm not able to make it work properly. I want to set up one of the screens as vertical and the other one as horizontal...

I'm able to use then both as vertical or both as horizontal...

PD: I have an NVidia card, I've talk with people that have ATI cards and appears to be easier...

PD2: I'm using Ubuntu 10.04

Solution 1

You can probably use the xrandr tool for this (assuming that your driver supports the xrandr extension - I guess most do).

To check what monitors are connected and if xrandr works just type in a terminal

xrandr

On my system I get for example:

LVDS1 connected [..] DP2 connected 1920x1200 [..]

Now you can configure the placement etc. of the different outputs.

For example:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1280x800 --output HDMI2 --mode 1600x1200 --left-of LVDS1 --rotate left

This configures two screen side by side, the laptop-sceen is placed on the right of the external TFT and the TFT screen is rotated by 90 degrees (portrait mode).

To switch between different external monitors, often you need to switch one off, e.g. with

xrandr --output HDMI2 --off

because a lot of graphic cards just support 2 outputs enabled at the same time.

Solution 2

I don't have enough rep to comment yet but I'd like to mention that although @garbagecollector's link is relevant, I believe that Ubuntu stopped using a default xorg.conf in 9.10. However I'm lead to believe it will respect an xorg.conf file if it exists.

Here's a link I stumbled upon to use an xorg.conf file again:

http://www.osguides.net/operation-systems/217-how-to-create-xorgconf-in-ubuntu-910.html

Solution 3

I believe the this blog post discusses the affect your trying to achieve. :)

You also might want to check out Xinerama

Comments

[moberley]

On my system using the Nvidia proprietary driver the vendor settings program created an xorg.conf file for me when I used it to configure a dual monitor setup.

[Khelben]

It's not working, it rotates BOTH screens, instead of just one :-(