Disappointed by Ubuntu's dual screen handling plus problems with resolution

[UeB]

Hallo,

I bought a 26" TFT monitor and want to use it as a second screen for my laptop. So far I was not able to use it as I had it in mind.

First it only works if I connect it before I boot Ubuntu. Then I am not able to set the right resolution in the gnome display app. The maximal resultion I can set there is 1440x900 which is the resolution of the laptop screen although the correct resolution of the new TFT is 1.920x1.200.

But additionally the default handling of two screens is very confusing. I can drag windows from one screen to the other. That is nice. But when I maximise them they get maximised in BOTH screens as one big window. This behaviour is especially stupid when I want to watch a video file, because the half of the video is shown on each screen.

Ah and by the way the with a hdmi cable only cloning the desktop works so I bound to the vga calbe to be able to run different apps on the monitors.

Needles to say in the pre installed windows vista all worked well and as intended. The right resolution was not set by default but I could easily set it in the windows display app. Also when I maximise or full screen an app it only get maximised / full screened in on the monitor the app window currently is. And HDMI also just worked.


I attached a full list of my laptop hardware (the output of lshw). I have Ubuntu 9.04 and the proprietary ati drivers installed

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions!

[markbuntu]

Are you using the newest driver from ati?
That will fix your problem.

[UeB]

Uhm yes I forgot to mention this: I use the drive that was recommend by the hardware driver app of Ubuntu 9.04.
I can I just download the newer driver from amd.com and install it or should I first uninstall the one I am using at the moment?

[markbuntu]

You should remove old drivers before installing new ones to avoid problems with kernel updates.

[carolinason]

what about using open source drivers? I have an ATI Radeon 9000 EDIT*** Since the catalyst drivers don't support this card ***EDIT and have almost the same issue. I am limited in what resolutions I have and this isn't nice, since i could have 1440x900 and only get 1024x768. the other monitor will run at it's best res.

UGH!

[markbuntu]

You should read this if you are using the open source drivers

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

[tgalati4]

I don't think the VGA cable can handle 1920x1200. To get the higher resolution you need to use HDMI or DVI.

[UeB]

I don't think the VGA cable can handle 1920x1200. To get the higher resolution you need to use HDMI or DVI.

Well in Windows Vista I can set the right resolutin 1920x1200 with either the vga or the hdmi calbe so i do not think that the problems with the right resolution in linux is some sort of hardware limitation.

[tgalati4]

It's possible that the linux driver does not cycle through all of the resolution combinations (perhaps written before 1920x1200 became popular).

Look through .xsession errors in your home directory and /var/log/Xorg.0.log for clues as to why 1920x1200 is not found or selected.

[UeB]

Sooo I clicked on "remove" (the ati driver) in the ubuntu hardware app, rebooted installed the driver form the amd website (ati-driver-installer-9-9-x86.x86_64.run) rebooted. When I was asked if the installed should create a distribution specific driver I chose the default answer which was no hat the word automatic in the sentencse which so

And well then I got a nice new problem: a splash screen saying: "Ubuntu is running in low-graphics mode"

Then comes a question: "There already appears to be an X server running on display :0. Should I try another display number?"

I ansered yes and my gnome desktop was stated...
But only on the external monitor the laptop screen is black and after swiching to tty1 and back to X I seem to be have only 256 colors left...

soooo my question is what could I try to well make it work al little better and if this is not possible how to get rid of the driver...

kind regards