DualHead behavior in nv(4), X.org 7.2

[Alex Deucher]

On 9/1/07, Darren Spruell <phatbuckett at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm running Xorg 7.2 from FreeBSD ports collection on amd64. I have a
> card identified as 'nVidia Corporation NV41 [Quadro FX 3450/4000 SDI]
> rev 162'. The card has two display outputs and I would like to use the
> nv driver in a dual (flatpanel) monitor configuration.
>
> I've activated Option "DualHead" in my xorg.conf and notice that my
> display spans both monitors as a single display, but this ends up
> being difficult to work with as items tend to display in the middle
> (half on one monitor and half on the other), or windows are maximized
> across both monitor displays, spanning the full width.
>
> I'd like to get it working so that maximized windows only maximize to
> the area a single monitor, and I'd like to use the second monitor as a
> display for more windows that I can expand items to the size of
> separately from the first, and I'd like to get things working with a
> resolution of 1600x1200 in both screens.
>
> Can this be done in the nv(4) driver? Is DualHead the right way?
>

the dualhead option is more of a quick hack to allow dualhead to work.
 Since it doesn't use xinerama or randr, there are no hints for
desktops to look at to get head sizes.  You'd have to hack in a driver
specific xinerama layer or use a hack like fake libxinerama
(http://ktown.kde.org/~seli/fakexinerama/) to arbitrarily divide the
screen into specific sizes.  The latter is probably easiest fix.

Alex