Mark Knecht posted on Wed, 04 Sep 2013 12:09:51 -0700 as excerpted: > Amazingly, _both_ problems were solved. X came up nicely (on 2 monitors > only) and login is immediate. > > I think for my needs I'll remove the unused card, live with 2 > monitors for now and consider how to proceed while maintaining a long > term supported nature to the kernel and video drivers. I run 'mostly > stable' so as long as long term kernels get security updates and I don't > add new hardware to this 3 year old machine I think I'll be happy.
Currently, things really do seem to be moving toward the single-card/ multi-output solution, for multi-monitor, and they've been moving that way for awhile, as multiple outputs on a single card become more common. There's a lot of very nasty graphics coordination issues that simply disappear when it's a single card driving everything. At my last graphics update, a big one as it was part of a full system update, finally moving from an old AGP bus mobo (on an 8-year-old system) to modern PCIE, I was happy to find not just double-output, but triple- output, was now reasonably common in a mainline card. Couple that with the trends towards larger monitors and digital-TV finally allowing the merge of TVs and monitors at larger sizes and reasonable (TV) HD-resolutions (TV resolutions are reasonable for monitors now too; for years they were simply too low), thus bringing down "big-screen" TV/monitor prices into the "normal people's budget" realm, and the now commonly available 40-inch-plus TV/monitor solutions really do drive down the need for multiple monitors as well. Stated elsewise, it's an unusual use-case indeed that really NEEDS more than triple-monitor at 1920x1080 each, at 42-72 inches per monitor, and that's now within reach of a reasonably mainline budget, on just a single very solidly mainline single graphics card. FWIW, I'm a bit physically size-constrained here and that's the effective cap on total graphics real-estate available to me now. I'm running triple monitor, two 42-inch full-HD 1920x1080 in stacked config for 1920x2160 as mains, with an old 21-inch full-HD logically stacked on top of that for a 1920x3240 desktop, but the third one is physically located to the side, displaying real-time system monitor information at double the font size (actually triple, I think) since it's half the physical size at the same resolution, thus still making it still readable with my now aging (mid to late 40s, reading/computer glasses!) eyes. I /think/ it was this list where that came up in a thread and I posted screenshots, a few months ago. But... with dual full-HD 42-inch-TV monitors as my mains, I really don't /need/ the third one and only threw it into the mix when I realized I had both a still unused output and an old monitor laying around from before the upgrade to 42-inch. It's nice to have as it allows me to get the real-time system monitor stuff entirely out of the normal working area and off my main monitors while still keeping it visible at all times, but that's it, nice-to-have, NOT don't-know-what-I'd-do-without-it. OTOH, if I wasn't so space constrained and with a somewhat bigger budget to work with, I'd probably have tried to find a 4-output card at a semi- reasonable price-point, and would have gone with a 4 by 52-60-inch monitors config in classic 2x2 layout. Or even a (still definitely *NOT* mainline and thus *QUITE* expensive, AFAIK) 6-output setup and a classic 3x2 layout, all say 60-inch monitors, double-stacked, left/center/right. But of course the 6X in 3x2 layout thing is entirely dreamland and would take probably double my income level (at least) to put it in anything like reasonable territory, as there's a lot of other things (including a bigger house/room to put it in!) that would take priority before I got to that. I'm really quite happy indeed with my current setup, tho I might well upgrade that current 21-inch to a 32-inch at some point, about the biggest I could fit where I have it, and if I upgrade to quad-output graphics at some point, in theory I could add a second 32-inch beside that before I'd really have my space maxed out, but at this point I really can't say what I'd actually use it for. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
