Separate X Screens - possible on Intel Integrated HD Graphics?

[Keith Packard]

Ken Taylor <di604admin at embarqmail.com> writes:

> I appreciate the vote of confidence.  Perhaps "separate X screens" is 
> something which only a small percentage of user are multi-tasking enough 
> to take advantage of.

As you know, in X, a "screen" is a pretty central abstraction, with
Windows, Pixmaps and other graphics resources all specified in relation
to a single "screen". You can't mix-n-match resources between screens,
leading to the inability to move windows between them.

Over the years, we've substituted that with a similar notion which
offers functionality more similar to other window systems, the 'one
screen, many monitors' plan as first implemented in PanoramiX (now
Xinerama) and then RandR.

Here's the differences I can think of between the 'one screen, many
monitors' and 'many screens, one monitor each' configurations. If you've
got others, I'd love to hear them.

One screen, many monitors (Xinerama/RandR):

        * Move windows among monitors freely
        * Add/remove monitors on the fly

Many screens, one monitor each (core X):

        * Specify which monitor an application will appear on via the
          command line (or environment variable).

In both:

        * Resize monitors on the fly
        * Configure the desktop on each monitor separately
        * Specify the initial monitor setup in config files.

As far as video driver support, the internal server support for multiple
"screens" on a single graphics device is twisty, and very few people
ever bother to test these setups. It's possible that it will be broken
on your favorite card at some point.

You can probably understand that supporting both of these models is
extra work for all of the developers, and it would be nice if we could
make a single model work for most people.

-- 
-keith
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