Primary monitor of dual setup

Tomas Carnecky tom at dbservice.com
Tue Aug 19 08:34:02 PDT 2008


Steven J Newbury wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 11:13 -0400, Alex Deucher wrote:
>> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 12:35 AM, Russell Shaw <rjshaw at netspace.net.au> wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>> I used xrandr to set up two monitors with one desktop stretched between them.
>>>
>>> The window manager taskbar (icewm) appears on the right-hand monitor.
>>>
>>> How do i make the left-hand monitor the primary one?
>>>
>> I'm not sure about icewm, but with gnome, you can just drag the panel
>> to whichever monitor you want it on.
> 
> That really isn't a solution though.  It has to be done every time you
> expand the desktop AFAICT.
> 
> The "right" solution has to be the ability to re-order (specify primary)
> outputs with xrandr.  This is the only thing I'm really unhappy with
> with respect to the xrandr monitor hotplug support.

Technically, AFAICS, there is no notion of 'primary' and 'secondary' 
outputs. All outputs are equal, and reported in the order in which the 
driver detects them. IMO the 'right' solution would be to configure 
these things (such as: where should the panel appear?) in the desktop 
(gnome/kde etc). Or have the gnome panel remember to which output is was 
dragged to.

tom



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