# X.Org server: Possible to do the multihead without xinerama?



## nekoexmachina (Jun 17, 2018)

I recall that a lot of time ago I've used to have a setup in which I've had 2 monitors, different resolutions and different DPI, but same keyboard and mouse. In that setup, it was impossible to move windows between monitors, as there were two servers: `DISPLAY=:0.0` and `DISPLAY=:0.1`. 

I've read through wikis and mans, and I don't get it. Is the ability to make such a setup gone from modern X.Org versions? Is Xinerama the only solution?


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jun 17, 2018)

I run two monitors without xinerama with my nvidia card for years.


----------



## Deleted member 54719 (Jun 17, 2018)

In your xorg.conf file you would have two "serverlayout" sections.  Each refers to a distinct GPU "Device" section.

There are many examples online if you search for `xorg.conf multiple serverlayout sections`


----------



## sidetone (Jun 17, 2018)

Reference x11/xrandr from ~/.xinit or ~/.xsession using 1 xserver.
Insert something like:

```
xrandr --output DVI-0 --right-of HDMI-0
```

You can optionally run a graphical version x11/arandr to find your desired settings for xrandr.


----------



## nekoexmachina (Jun 18, 2018)

sidetone said:


> Reference x11/xrandr from ~/.xinit or ~/.xsession using 1 xserver.
> Insert something like:
> 
> ```
> ...


I didn't have a chance to run with two monitors (yet) on this system, but xrandr creates a big single space, which only logically is 2 different monitors, and you can not define different DPI per server, which you could do in case of running 2 different xorg servers (in theory), which was what I was asking about.
now, xrandr can do --scale, if I recall correctly, but this results in blurry fonts, and there is no task that I can do wtihout seeing text, so that renders secondary monitor useless. 
With default dpi of 192, which I use for my main screen, stuff on second screen is just gigantic.




drhowarddrfine said:


> I run two monitors without xinerama with my nvidia card for years.


NVidia.. I don't have that, this is a laptop with dumb optimus setup. Only reason this laptop even *has* secondary gpu in first place is that this was the only option with a decent CPU.


----------

