gnomegnome-shellmultiple-monitorsworkspaces
Gnome-shell seems to like to leave one monitor as "fixed" when you switch workspaces.
Additionally, there is no preview in the Activities view of my secondary monitor.
Also, on the second monitor, where there should be either empty desktop space, or a copy of the panel, I just have a white bar.
How can I get gnome-shell to treat my secondary monitor like the primary one?
This behaviour is by design. The GNOME designers decided this was the best thing to do, not taking their actual users into account.
Luckily the behaviour can be reverted. You can use Gnome Tweaks or execute the following in the terminal, re-login and you're all set:
gsettings set org.gnome.shell.overrides workspaces-only-on-primary false
or using this on older systems:
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/shell/windows/workspaces_only_on_primary false --type bool
You probably want to have panels and workspace preview on all monitors too: How to have both monitors in the workspace preview for Gnome Shell?
This is doable with an extension called multi-monitors-add-on.
You can also find it on extensions.gnome.org for installation.
If you are using the latest version of Gnome shell (3.14 and 3.16) use the master branch:
git clone git://github.com/spin83/multi-monitors-add-on.git
cd multi-monitors-add-on
cp -r multi-monitors-add-on@spin83 ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
For Ubuntu 14.04, which has Gnome shell 3.10, use the gnome-3-10 branch:
git clone git://github.com/spin83/multi-monitors-add-on.git
git checkout gnome-3-10
cd multi-monitors-add-on
cp -r multi-monitors-add-on@spin83 ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
then restart gnome shell and enable the extension. To enable it, you can use the Tweak Tool.
The result:
The extension has a lot of options including removing panels and such. I turn off the panel on the extra monitors and then leave "Thumbnails-Slider" options turned on.
Best Answer
Setting
workspaces-only-on-primary false(usinggsetting,gconftool, GNOME Tweak or whatever – see all other answers) only solves the first problem:For the second problem
there is a GNOME extension called Multi Monitors Add-On that Just Works™. (See also How do I install and manage GNOME Shell extensions?)