Ubuntu – Dual nVidia GPUs (3 monitors) not working in 11.10

11.10multiple-monitorsnouveaunvidiaxinerama

after searching I have not found a solution.

I have 2 nvidia quadro 295 cards with 3 monitors but I can not extend twinview across multiple GPUs.

I have the most recent nvidia proprietary drivers installed, and they work fine for the single GPU / dual monitors. I tried using xinerama, but without success.

I don't mind switching to the nouveau drivers if that would handle my multiple monitors, although I would like to continue to use unity and compiz if i can).

Best Answer

it turns out that Unity and Xinerama do not play nice together anymore, as Xinerama and Composition cannot be run simultaneously. until rrandr takes over multi-gpu stuff, or until twinview gets much smarter, multi-gpus will not be possible for most newer window managers (Gnome3 suffers from this same problem).

i tried backing down to ubuntu classic to get it to work, but i'm tired of screwing with it. it would replicate the same screen on all 3 screens, but wouldn't treat them as one big one. sadly, there's no real great examples of how to get this to work in xorg.conf.

so for anyone else trying this, you're pushing a rope in respect to Unity/Compiz. you can probably get it to work in Ubuntu Classic, but be prepared for a fight.

this is pretty sad. if i could get Windows 7 running on this box, i'd use it and run linux in a VM. that's what people are going to have to do to get this stuff running on multi-GPU systems.

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