Contributed by merdely on Tue May 6 18:01:15 2008 (GMT)
from the xinerama-is-awesome dept.

Xinerama(3) [Wikipedia] has been part of the OpenBSD X distribution for some time. I was able to get a chance to play with it when I got my hands on a second video card and monitor.

As an x11/dwm user, I leaned towards x11/awesome as my Xinerama-aware window manager. More information about how I got Xinerama working and how I configured x11/awesome below.

Prior to adding the second video card and monitor to my system, I was previously able to run xenocara without an xorg.conf on my i386 machine. After installing the second card and attaching the monitor, I used 'X -configure' to generate a configuration file. After that, I only had to modify a couple pieces of my xorg.conf. My ServerLayout section looks like this. I had to add the "Xinerama" "On" Option:

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier     "X.org Configured"
        Screen 0       "Screen0" 0 0
        Screen 1       "Screen1" RightOf "Screen0"
        InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
        InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
        Option         "Xinerama" "On"
EndSection

Not all window managers are Xinerama-aware/capable. The "awesome" window manager is a fork of the dwm window manager that supports Xinerama and run-time configuration. Since I use dwm on my laptop, I felt comfortable using awesome on my dual-head desktop. The only pertinent changes I made to my ~/.awesomerc (to make it more useful to me) are changing:

    key
    {
        modkey = {"Mod1"}
        key = "Tab"
        command = "focus_history"
        arg = "-1"
    }

to

    key
    {
        modkey = {"Mod1"}
        key = "Tab"
        command = "screen_focus"
        arg = "+1"
    }
    key
    {
        modkey = {"Mod1", "Shift"}
        key = "Tab"
        command = "screen_focus"
        arg = "-1"
    }

The above change allows <alt>+<tab> and <alt>+<shift>+<tab> to cycle between screens instead of windows. I also added:

    key
    {
        modkey = {"Mod1"}
        key = "p"
        command = "spawn"
        arg = "exec dmenu_run"
    }
    key
    {   
        modkey = {"Mod1", "Shift", "Control"}
        key = "j"
        command = "client_movetoscreen"
        arg = "+1"
    }
    key
    {   
        modkey = {"Mod1", "Shift", "Control"}
        key = "k"
        command = "client_movetoscreen"
        arg = "-1"
    }

This makes <alt>+<p> launch x11/dmenu, <alt>+<shift>+<ctrl>+<j> move a window to the screen to the right and <alt>+<shift>+<ctrl>+<k> move a window to the screen to the left.

With my two screen set up, I generally have my GUI applications on the left-hand screen (firefox, thunderbird) and a local xterm. On the right-hand screen, I have my "main" xterm running screen with mutt, irssi and different connections to the different hosts I manage. [screenshot]

Even though Xinerama has generally been deprecated by XRandR (and it's accompanying command: xrandr(1)), XRandR isn't supported by older X drivers (like the one I'm using). Also, XRandR is designed for use with multiple outputs on one card, not multiple cards as in this case. I don't have a dual-head card to test, so can't comment on it. If anyone with such hardware would like to comment, please do so below.

If you've got some "Stupid User Tricks" you'd like to share, please submit a story.