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Re: [LUG] Running two independent instances of X (including two window managers) on one PC

 

Quoting Simon Williams <simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:

> Rob Beard wrote:
>> So, I wondered, is there anyone out there who's managed to get two
>> independent X screens running.  Ideally I'd like to be able to have two
>> X screens running two different window managers (maybe Gnome/Metacity
>> and possibly a lightwight one such as FWM) and have them behave as if
>> they're completely independent using a pair of USB keyboards and mice.
>
>> I'd ideally like to stick with the ATI card (I have two of these cards
>> installed at the moment which isn't really what I want but I can live
>> with it if need be) but I'd be willing to move over to an NVidia card if
>> I had to, although I chose ATI on the basis that it can use an Open
>> Source driver (I really don't like running the FGLRX driver as Compiz
>> doesn't work and playing video in a window is very slow).
>
> I've tried doing the dual keyboard/mouse thing with my laptop and I can
> tell you now that's it's currently impossible to do it with a dual
> output card- you need 2 independent cards because when you have a
> dual-output card both screens are accessed with the same resources, so
> you can't have one X server running on one screen and one on the other.
>

Ahh I see, I do have another X300 card which is plugged into the  
second PCI-E slot (it's an SLI board, but it detects both cards) which  
in theory would give me 4 monitor outputs.  I'll keep playing and see  
if I can convince the PC to run with both cards.  If not I guess I'll  
have to look at getting a different card, maybe an nVidia card and  
have two different cards in the PC.

Rob





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