Bug 92177

Summary: KDE's overall non-xinerama multihead 'behaviour' should be improved
Product: [I don't know] kde Reporter: Imre Tuske <tusimi>
Component: dualheadAssignee: Stephan Kulow <coolo>
Status: RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED    
Severity: wishlist CC: bugzillas, jesiphone2020, nate
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: openSUSE   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Imre Tuske 2004-10-27 01:06:12 UTC
Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.3.1)
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs
OS:                Linux

KDE should have better support for regular (non-xinerama) multihead configurations.

In such cases, there are (at least) two separate desktops running, one for each screen. One area that should be improved is the control panel settings. Some of them are applied on a per-desktop basis (such as background images, etc.) while others are applied globally (such as font settings).

It would be very useful to somehow clear this up in a way that at the end all desktops (screens) would have their own set of UI settings independently of each other (it would be a very logical step as they _are_ separate desktops after all).

(As a side note, I'd like to mention that most of the 'basic' desktop elements [especially the kicker and related programs] seem to be less stable in non-xinerama multihead mode -- as compared to 'regular' single monitor mode, where KDE is quite a positive experience.)
Comment 1 Stephan Kulow 2004-10-27 11:18:18 UTC
no developer uses this setup and we consider it not really of any importance - especially as all programs are running twice and you can't migrate between the screens. But if you like to become maintainer of it, it's not really hard to add the things you want.
Comment 2 Imre Tuske 2004-10-27 11:53:50 UTC
On 27 Oct 2004 09:18:20 -0000, Stephan Kulow <coolo@kde.org> wrote:

> ------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
> You reported the bug, or are watching the reporter.
> http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=92177
> coolo kde org changed:
>
>            What    |Removed                     |Added
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>          AssignedTo|bastian kde org             |coolo kde org
>           Component|general                     |dualhead
>
>
>
> ------- Additional Comments From coolo kde org  2004-10-27 11:18 -------
> no developer uses this setup and we consider it not really of any  
> importance - especially as all programs are running twice and you can't  
> migrate between the screens. But if you like to become maintainer of it,  
> it's not really hard to add the things you want.


Well, I'd also rather consider using cinerama, but AFAIK it doesn't have
hardware acceleration (and I mostly work with 3d/OpenGL applications). And
yet I still have 2 monitors, so that's the reason why I'm using it  
(actually
I could use TwinView because I have an NVidia card, but my monitors have  
different
capabilities, so I use a different resolution for each what and I'm not  
sure if
this can be done with TwinView -- at least under Win2K it can't be).

I don't know much about the development of Xinerama, but if at the end it  
will
have hw/gl acceleration (one can always hope :) ), that would be the best  
'solution'
for this.




imre



Comment 3 Ralf Hildebrandt 2006-03-11 21:01:19 UTC
TwinView can do different resolutions on the two screens. See http://www.stahl.bau.tu-bs.de/~hildeb/satellitepro/ for my xorg.conf which does exactly that.
Comment 4 Ralf Hildebrandt 2006-03-11 21:02:15 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 5 Hrishikesh Mehendale (हृषीकेश मेहेंदळे) 2006-12-26 18:46:55 UTC
A few nits I would like to pick with the current (KDE 3.5.5 from stock Ubuntu Edgy 6.10) in multi-head mode:

1. For some reason, Alt-Tab cycles only between windows on ONE screen instead of both screens, depending on where the mouse pointer is (or where the current app focus is - depending on click-to-focus setting). This, even though I can "resize" a window to go across multiple screens (very useful, don't remove that please!)

2. I noticed this one because of my peculiar setup - I have a dualhead configuration, where my second screen is "above" my first screen. Thus, my effective desktop is 1280x1024 + 1280x800 => 1280x1824. In such a scenario, if I have an application (e.g. Kopete or Konqueror) whose top end resides at the highest point on the lower screen, the menu dropdowns actually drop-up onto the screen above. If I resize this so the app is not at the top edge of the lower screen (even by a few pixels), the menu drops downward as usual.

It may not be high priority, but this definitely needs a fix!
Comment 6 Jonathan E. Snow 2009-10-28 19:45:44 UTC
"KDE Developers aren't interested" is not an acceptable resolution to this bug. A significant number of users depend on this feature, which works just fine in KDE 3.5.x. It's the height of arrogance. Or pehaps laziness. You guys put vast resources into useless animations that are hard to switch off. It gives the whole project a bad name. 

I think KDE is really losing its way.
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2020-09-09 03:08:59 UTC
Bug was reported against KDE3 and pertains to dualhead (as distinct from multi-monitor), neither of which are officially supported anymore. Sorry. :)