Hi everybody,
I feel a little awkward asking about it on the mailing list, given that
there's a big entry in the wiki and Google is not stingy with information,
either.
What I want
===========
My situation is that I have a laptop with Intel graphics adapter and an
external screen connected via display port (I think). I don't know in advance
the model or which resolution the screen has, this rules out any static
configuration. I'd like to connect the external screen without restarting the
Xserver and have another nine independent tags. I want to be able to send
windows from my current screen to the other one.
What I've tried so far
======================
When I connect the second screen awesome restarts and I have a strange setup.
The external screen is placed at the right of my laptop monitor and entirely
black. However, when I leave the laptop monitor at the right edge, the mouse
cursor is displayed on the external monitor. But I cannot do anything. I can
not move any window to this screen and there is no awesome wibox with the
tags. It seems like awesome is not “running” on this screen.
Using XRandR
------------
As suggested in the wiki page “Using_Multiple_Screens” I ran
xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 1280x1024 --right-of LVDS1
Nothing changed. It seems that this is the default mode when an external
screen is being connected. I tried to push the “XF86Display” button on my
laptop, it seems to cycle through all possible xrandr modes. None of them does
what I want. Cloning is not what I want and does not work with screens with
different resolutions and the “--right-of” mode behaves weird as described, I
only have a cursor.
Using Xinerama
--------------
To activate Xinerama I quit my Xserver and ran `Xorg -configure`. I then
placed the file in `/etc/X11/xorg.conf` and added the line `Option "Xinerama"
"true"` to `ServerLayout`. After a restart I had exactly what I wanted. A
second, independent awesome on the second screen. I quickly discovered that
Xinerama does not like connecting and disconnecting the screens on-the-fly. I
always had to restart the Xserver when I connect a screen. I found the
following statement on Wikipedia:
> Static configuration - physical screens cannot be added or removed
> dynamically […]
This makes Xinerama unusable for me.
The solution ??
===============
I am pretty sure this is a not too exotic setup, but I fail to set it up
correctly. Maybe some of you with a multi-head setup can give me a nudge in
the right direction. Can I use XRandR for this? If yes, with which
configuration? Is there another solution I didn't try?
If you are reading this I appreciate your interest and apologize for this
too long post.
I am running awesome debian/3.4.13-1
Kind regards
Marco
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