Dual Displays in Linux

[carlos]

Ok - I notice that at work, all our developers have dual LCD's or CRT's. They all run the same Windows XP SP2 image I created for them however their Dell boxes all have simply one PCI-Express card. The card then has a splitter simular to this.

This allows them to go in XP display properties and set a 2nd LCD after the "initialize" it.

Can this be done in Linux as well or do I need to have dual video cards? I am currently using a Nvidia 7800GTX with dual DVI outputs however if Linux can allow me to use the splitter and add the 2nd LCD, that would be exactly what I am looking for.

Thanks for any possible information!

[mooninite]

If you need two LCD/CRT outputs, use the provided DVI ports. Why do you use a splitter?

[carlos]

I don't know. Are you saying that I can just use LCD's and run a DVI cable per LCD to both DVI1 and DVI2 output on the back of the single 7800GTX card?

[isez2001]

Yes.

(With the proper configuration, of course... search around for a thing called "TwinView")

[pe1chl]

The splitter on those Dell cards is because they don't have enough room on the backplane (often a lowprofile box) to have two DVI connectors. They use one connector and a cable to split it out to two DVI or two VGA connectors.

This is simply a dual-output video card just like your 7800 (but of course lower in performance) and can be treated the same way when connecting two monitors.

[raven-au]

Originally Posted by carlos

I don't know. Are you saying that I can just use LCD's and run a DVI cable per LCD to both DVI1 and DVI2 output on the back of the single 7800GTX card?

Works for me using nVidia TwinView.

Check out
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/pdfs/LX...t_twinview.pdf

This is probably the best description of dual-head X11 setup I've
seen.

[carlos]

Thanks everyone for the info and point in the right direction!