Next Previous Contents

1. IntroductionMany changes made based input from Nico Schottelius nicos@pcsystems.de

1.1 What is Xinerama?

Why do you need Xinerama ? And what is it ? The Xinerama extensions were introduced to the XFree86 system in version 4.0. Xinerama is an extension to XFree86 Release 6 Version 4.0 (X4.0) which allows applications and window managers to use the two (or more) physical displays as one large virtual display.

The beauty of the Xinerama extensions is that they are totally transparent to user space. Previously, applications could only reside on one of the displays and could not be moved between the two. Window managers had to be specially written to support the two displays. With Xinerama, window managers and applications don't have to be specially written to support the larger "Virtual Desktop" which Xinerama creates.

1.2 Guidelines

This is not meant to be a guide on how to set up your specific monitor, or videocard. In fact, I assume that you already have X Window running for your setup. Please refer to the XF86 Documentation for more information.

As far as I know, there are no limits to which video cards you can configure this way, nor does it seem to matter if you mix different types of video cards in a setup, The sample configuration I use in this documentation uses two different video cards, an AGP Fire GL 1000 and a PCI Matrox Millenium II. What effect this has on 3d Accelleration I don't know as I don't currently accellerate either of my video cards.

This Howto assumes that you know how to edit text files, do basic video card configuration for X Window, add and remove hardware from your system, start and stop system services, and follow simple instructions. If feel you will have trouble with any of these things, please seek help. I am not responsible if you damage any of your stuff.


Next Previous Contents