Re: Gnome 3 vs scientists (ie., external monitor problem)

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

On Tue, 2011-05-31 at 08:25 -0400, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-05-30 at 11:20 -0400, Jan Skowron wrote: 
> > I am writing to ask: which exact parameter of a graphics card decides
> > about the maximal resolution card can handle in 3d accelerated mode
> > (needed for Gnome 3)?
> > I couldn't find this on the Gnome 3 web page. Could you add a link to
> > such information in the FAQ section where talking about the graphics
> > requirements?
> 
> It is currently problematic;  simply put - GNOME3 [specifically mutter?]
> has issues with multiple displays.  
> 
> mutter does not support multiple X11 screens
> <https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=648156>

I don't think having multiple unconnected screens that you can't move
windows between is at all interesting. We're basically just not
interested in spending effort to make that work better.

> If you have a reasonably current nVidia adapter you can get 'working'
> multi-head using the nvidia-settings application using TwinView.  See my
> report @
> <http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-shell-list/2011-May/msg00549.html>

It's hard to provide assistance with the operation of nvidia-settings -
not under our control. If your nvidia card isn't *too* recent and you
don't have strong needs for full-featured/full-performance 3d, the
nouveau drivers work pretty well and are configured through the standard
GNOME tools.

> This issue is frustrating because it is nearly impossible to figure out
> even what *should* work.  My previous laptop had an Intel 945GM video
> adapter and suffered from just the issue you describe - it would
> accelerate only up to the resolution of the internal display [how stupid
> is that?]

It's not the resolution of the internal display, it's 2048 pixels wide.
This is a hardware limit. The only hardware with such limit likely
to be encountered

 Intel 945 (and older): horizontal limit of 2048 pixels
 Radeon R300 (and older): limit of 2560 pixels

(Of course, newer hardware has limits too, but they tend to be 4096
or 8192 pixels, so affect far less configurations.)

R300's aren't found on anything remotely close to recent; but the Intel
945 are still fairly common. But more in netbooks than on anything that
I'd consider normal for "scientific computing" or "development".

- Owen