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If I plug an external CRT to my laptop, it normally either displays the same picture as the laptop's panel, or extends the desktop area. But I'd like it to be a separate virtual desktop (a workspace, in terms of Gnome). Is it possible?

I use Toshiba L10 laptop with Intel 82852/855GM onboard card. And I switch (which, AFAIK, can be an inconvenience with Xinerama) monitor configurations (detach all monitors but a laptop's built-in panel, attach monitors with different resolutions) pretty often (sometimes many times a day).

Ivan
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What kind of videocard are you using? With an nVidia card I would recommend using twinview. Otherwise it should be possible to simply enable xinerama for it to work.

Wolph
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  • I use Intel 82852/855GM. And I switch (which, AFAIK, can be an inconvenience with Cinerama) monitor configurations (detach all monitors but a laptop's built-in panel, attach monitors with different resolutions) pretty often (sometimes many times a day). – Ivan Oct 03 '10 at 02:29
  • @Ivan: you're right, xinerama sometimes get confused when changing monitor sizes dynamically (on my laptop with nvidia drivers I am sometimes required to restart X to make it work properly). If you have all the resolutions you commonly use preconfigured in your xorg config than it usually works fairly well with intel though. Or atleast... the last time I tried (admittedly, 2-3 years ago) it worked nicely. – Wolph Oct 03 '10 at 02:51
  • Would you be so kind to take a look and share your experience at this question then: http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com/questions/5138/how-do-i-best-enable-xinerama – Ivan Oct 03 '10 at 20:51
  • I've enabled Xinerama the way yo wrote, but the situation has not changes. Both displays are still merged into one big workspace instead of 2 separate. There are minor signs of that something has changed, but no practical difference. Any further ideas? – Ivan Oct 04 '10 at 23:19
  • @Ivan: with xinerama you have 1 screen, but they are virtually separated so you can maximize everything per screen and it should feel for most things as a separate screen. You can still drag screens from screen 1 to screen 2. The alternative is 2 completely separate screens but that way you won't be able to move anything from screen 1 to screen 2 anymore. – Wolph Oct 05 '10 at 10:11
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    One screen with ability to maximise per screen - that was what I already had without Xinerama. I want 2 separate screens with separate taskbars. I don't need to drag things between them directly, right-clicking on a window and selecting "move to workspace right" to move to another screen is what I want. I want "workspace switcher" panel applet to show my screens as 2 separate workspaces. – Ivan Oct 05 '10 at 10:21
  • @Ivan: I don't think that's possible. They will not be separate workspaces of the same screen (which is what is needed for that). This way you can still share screens between the two monitors, the alternative is having 2 separate display's running which means that they have there own screens and you can't share anything but your mouse cursor between them. You should be able to have separate taskbars though, or atleast... I have a similar setup using KDE and I have 1 taskbar per monitor. – Wolph Oct 05 '10 at 15:00