18

I'm trying to add a second screen to my ubuntu 14.04 gnome setup, via a VNC client. To be clear: I don't want to connect to a different session, but the same. However, I want to see a different screen, not mirror the existing physical screen. I just want to extend the existing display with a "virtual" second screen that I can reach through VNC, instead of a physical one.

Much to my dismay, I haven't found a way to achieve this, let alone a simple one. Is there a way at all?

The VNC client will be an iPad app in this case, but it could be anything with a VNC client really, such as an old laptop that I wanted to use as a second monitor.

This might be a duplicate of "Adding a virtual screen to xorg.conf 11.04 (third display over vnc)". However, there is no answer to the actual question, and an answer suggesting a different route is accepted, so I'm posting this one to try and find an actual solution.

Community
  • 1
Esteban
  • 322
  • 1
  • 2
  • 9
  • 2
    https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=191555 That seems to be your solution. Didn't try, but looks good. – davidbaumann May 03 '15 at 20:44
  • did it actually 'work' good when you tried? (if you did try?) – KhoPhi Jun 05 '16 at 17:29
  • @Rexford it worked well, but not fast enough to watch a video or drag files around. VNC is really slow for those use cases. I usually just put a terminal window on the iPad screen and do everything else on the main display. – Esteban Jun 06 '16 at 18:26
  • 2
    @AntonioFeitosa This question is not a duplicate of "How do you use an android tablet as a second display?" or of any other question that I could find when I searched for another duplicate question. – karel Mar 04 '17 at 06:20
  • 1
    I made a simple bash script to make a tablet a second display. Copy ipad_monitor.sh (Don't worry. it also works with any VNC clients) from my blog post. – Bumsik Kim Apr 17 '18 at 17:14
  • @BumsikKim that's great! I have a script of my own now (I had forgotten about this question). But yours is tidier, you should post an extract of your blog post as an answer :) – Esteban Apr 18 '18 at 20:38
  • How about the answers in https://askubuntu.com/q/453109/26246 – user.dz May 16 '19 at 14:17

1 Answers1

3

You can use virtscreen on linux to use an ipad or other computer as a secondary screen.

sudo apt-get install x11vnc
wget https://github.com/kbumsik/VirtScreen/releases/download/0.3.1/virtscreen.deb
sudo dpkg -i virtscreen.deb
virtscreen

The app is made by Bumsik Kim who commented above (but it's been a year and they've not posted their solution, so I did).

pbhj
  • 3,231