Nvidia twinview finally easy to do.

[CheeseEatingBulldog]

I had some probs, as most people with setting up twinview so I could watch movies on my tv from my pc. A friend of mine ended up making an ugly work around which worked but required me to kill x and log in as root in to gdm.

Anyway now with feisty the nvidia-glx(new) bug had me with a broken x after upgrade, but this seems to have been fixed, and subsequently allows you to use the later nvidia drivers (9631 for me). I noticed the nvidia X screen settings now will generate xorg.conf code to enable xinorama and twinview. I didn't let the app save the file itself as it makes a pretty standard file without stuff like dri and glx, so I copied and pasted the other output into my xorg and now I have a seperate x screen to send videos too!

Anyone else have better results like this?

[garlik42]

I have had a great deal of success with twinview as of late, but I think it's more to do with documentation and the help I have found here on the ubuntu forums. I have tried a couple of times with gentoo to get my 2 different size screens connected to a single nvidia card to work correctly, and never seemed to get it right. After a couple of searches on this forum, and some time on nvidia's site, I was able to get 2 screens with different resolutions to work perfectly. As an additional benefit, the xorg.conf file also works with my gentoo install.

I still don't like the idea of a binary driver, I would feel better if it was available in source code format and maintained by the community, but I'll take what I can get !!

[CheeseEatingBulldog]

Well, that 'Nvidia X server settings' really did the job for me now have screen0 = 1280x1024 and screen1 = 800x600. So all one does is get a terminal and type ":~$DISPLAY=:0.1 totem --fullscreen /location of film.avi" and can still use my desktop whilst having a movie run on my tv. Never worked before...now it does like a charm.

[~LoKe]

Has always worked for me, but I didn't have a bit of trouble the first time settings it up.

[prizrak]

Haven't had a problem with it taking out DRI and GLX and yes it does work pretty well but not perfect. I was playing around with it and managed to disappear my laptop's monitor and only have it use the external. Had to unplug the external and press "Detect Monitors" to fix it. Yes I had to do it with no monitors on it wasn't fun.

[rickggreen]

I had some probs, as most people with setting up twinview so I could watch movies on my tv from my pc. A friend of mine ended up making an ugly work around which worked but required me to kill x and log in as root in to gdm.

Anyway now with feisty the nvidia-glx(new) bug had me with a broken x after upgrade, but this seems to have been fixed, and subsequently allows you to use the later nvidia drivers (9631 for me). I noticed the nvidia X screen settings now will generate xorg.conf code to enable xinorama and twinview. I didn't let the app save the file itself as it makes a pretty standard file without stuff like dri and glx, so I copied and pasted the other output into my xorg and now I have a seperate x screen to send videos too!

Anyone else have better results like this?

If you don't mind could you please post your xorg.conf. I'm running 9755 and don't seem to be alble to output, even in clone mode.

Thx

[CheeseEatingBulldog]

If you don't mind could you please post your xorg.conf. I'm running 9755 and don't seem to be alble to output, even in clone mode.

Thx

Sure, I am running a mx400 geforce2 card at 1280x1024 on screen0 and a widescreen tv at 800x600 on screen1.

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings: version 1.0 (buildmeister@builder3) Thu Nov 9 17:56:12 PST 2006

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Layout0"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
Screen 1 "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/lib/X11/rgb"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "i2c"
Load "bitmap"
Load "dbe"
Load "dri"
Load "ddc"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "record"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "auto"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
# generated from default
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: xconfig, VertRefresh source: xconfig
Identifier "Monitor0"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "CRT-0"
HorizSync 30.0 - 82.0
VertRefresh 55.0 - 90.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
# HorizSync source: builtin, VertRefresh source: builtin
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "TV-0"
HorizSync 28.0 - 33.0
VertRefresh 43.0 - 72.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "RenderAccel" "true"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
# Option "UseFBDev" "true"
Option "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
Option "backingstore" "true"
Option "TripleBuffer" "true"
# VideoRam 65536
Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"
Screen 0
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard1"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BoardName "GeForce2 MX/MX 400"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Screen 1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen1"
Device "Videocard1"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "metamodes" "TV: 800x600 +0+0; TV: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1600x1200" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "true"
EndSection


Hope it helps.

Just to add, if this works you should see two screens under 'Applications-->System Tools-->Nvidia X Servers Settings'. Then to launch a movie onto that screen (which should be showing an empty desktop picture on your tv after ctrl+alt+backspace) open a terminal and use:'DISPLAY=:0.1 totem (or any other player) --fullscreen (sometimes -f or --f) /location of movie/movie.avi'