Linux Mint 18 Cinnamon – freezes when second monitor is attached

In Cinnamon 2.6 and later you can have additional panels in any monitor without installing additional software. Just right-click the panel, click on Modify panel ... and then on Add panel. The top and bottom edges of all monitors should get highlighted and a new panel will be set up where you click. It works perfectly. Here is a github post from when it was merged.

Moreover, if you add a panel to a second monitor and add a Window list applet to it, it will only show you the windows in that monitor. It made me very happy!

In addition, if you want the windows to align towards the left instead of the right, you can drag and drop the Window list to the left side of the panel (red colored).

I met the same bug. Your workaround didn't work for me. Your trick is simply a trigger that makes the bug not to fall in. I digged in a bit and found a nice guy with a solution that might help others here as well.

The main problem is that the bug we met here causes the monitor which is scrolling into the other to have a virtual screen with the size of both screens summed. So the solution might seem to disable that extra virtual space on that screen to fit the monitors resolution. This is usually done with the --panning AxB argument - We use it to set the virtual space size.

This is how you could do it:

xrandr \
  --output LVDS-1-0 --mode 1920x1080 --panning 1920x1080 --pos 1920x0 \
  --output HDMI-0   --mode 1920x1080 --panning 1920x1080 --pos 0x0    --primary

(Slashed \ added to use newlines in the command.)

Sadly the problem here is that the driver (that is the bug) seems to overwrite the panning we set (or not set). But what it does not is to set another part of the panning: The tracking area! The Tracking area is actually that part of the screen the camera follows the cursor on that monitor.

tl;dr: So the idea is to set the panning as the driver but restrict the tracking area instead.

This is done with the following command:

xrandr \
  --output LVDS-1-0 --mode 1920x1080 \
  --output HDMI-0   --mode 1920x1080 --panning 3840x1080+0+0/1920x1080+1920+0/0/0/0/0    --primary

"The first four parameters [of the panning argument] specify the total panning area, the next four the pointer tracking area (which defaults to the same area). The last four parameters specify the border and default to 0." [man xrandr]