It’s really painful to get dual monitor done in Ubuntu (Hardy). I have tried so many ways to get my dual monitor works. Although I am a programmer, I am totally dumb in hardware like graphic card, system model or monitor type. And even my Ubuntu knowledge is intermediate for the software part, I do not know how to check my all those hardware stuffs from the system.
My first task is to identify the graphic driver ships with my PC.
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octalina@desktop:~$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon HD 2400 XT [1002:94c1]
Well, my first way is to install proprietary driver that I can get from ‘System->Administration->Hardware Drivers’. I *forget* to write down the driver name. But this driver slow down my computer and when I use ‘top’ command to show the process, ‘xorg’ takes up too much memory.
So second way is to get the correct driver and install it manually which can be found in Ubuntu forum and choose “ATI-only BigDesktop” driver. I follow the step for “ATI-only BigDesktop” by modifying my /etc/X11/xorg.conf (remember to back up /etc/X11/xorg.conf before performing any modification). After the process was done, I restarted my computer. Instead of loading login page, I get black screen instead. It’s only one way to recover by putting back the original xorg.conf file. After the second way fail, I thought I used the wrong driver, so I repeat the step again but using the ‘MergedFB‘ driver instead. Well, no luck, I get the same black screen.
Few days with only single monitor, I could not do my work efficiently. So I continued search for the correct way to setup my dual monitor. There is instruction for Ubuntu (Hardy) found in Ubuntu forum, but I use the “Instructions for Kubuntu 7.04 (Feisty)” instead because I want to use “fglrx-control” ATI accelerated graphic driver controller interface to configure my dual monitors.
So:
* Install linux-restricted-modules from the restricted repositories:
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules-generic
* Install the driver provided by ati included in the repositories:
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sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
* Install the control panel for the graphic card. Although I see lots of forum stated that this control panel is buggy, but it works fine with me.
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sudo apt-get install fglrx-control
The above control panel is located at “Other->ATI Catalyst Control Center”, this control panel will detect your monitor type and the graphic card you are using (which again I am dumb with this).
Choose monitor 1 and click on the display Modes tab. From here, you can choose to have your monitor cloned or use big desktop to widen the monitor.
Then lastly click on “Apply button”, you will be logged out from ubuntu with dual screen.
Dual Monitor in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex
After Upgraded to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, I thought that I can use the above instruction. However, the fglrx-control is not available for Ibex, it has been replaced with fglrx-amdcccle.
After installing fglrx-amdcccle, before using it, you need to activate the ATI Graphics Drivers from System->Administration->Hardware Drivers. Select the ATI/AMD proprietary FGLRX graphics driver and Activate it. You need to restart your computer.
Configure dual monitor can be done through command line by typing:
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sudo aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=above
Another way of configuring dual monitor is using the GUI from ATI Catalyst Control Center (the same as the configuration of the above Ubuntu Hardy). This Control center can be found in Applications->Accessories->ATI Catalyst Control Center.
Note: Another restart required after configuring to dual monitor mode.
Have fun
Have fun
