I have a problem afer installing Debian testing, because it insists in cloning my monitors.
I have a VGA monitor plugged into an HP Pavilion laptop, dual monitors are critical for my work.
I am using KDE full, and have BIOS set to UMA + sideport, entered additional shared memory 128 MB from system, for a total of 256 MB.
Card is ATI Radeon Xpress 200M 5955 (PCIE).
I don't have much choice of drivers, from smxi installed both ATI and Radeon, fglrx does not install and script exits with error.
I look in System Settings -> System Administration -> Startup and Shutdown -> Service Management, and Display Management is not running, I cannot start it.
In System Settings -> Hardware -> Display and Monitor -> Multiple Monitors says that it does not appear that I have the configuration.
However, Size & Orientation sees both monitors, but insists on cloning them, I cannot set the orientation, it reverts to clone.
The strange thing is that a day before I did manage to get Multiple Monitors working after re-installing radeon driver (I think), but today after starting computer, everything went back to clone.
Please help.

< Edited by ckosloff :: Jan 3, 12, 17:43 >
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you need to manually update your xorg.conf file, and add in the required radeon dual monitor stuff. I don't use ati cards for this very reason, nvidia has had great support for that, also needing an xorg.conf tweak for stable operation, but you can use their desktop tool as well.

However I do faintly remember that some guy, Latino I think, had radeon dual monitor support working, google it and get the required xorg.conf nformation.
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Got it!
The trick is to load the OS without the additional monitor installed.
Then when everything is running smooth in X, just plug it in, this launches the damn module (which will not start otherwise).
You can configure your monitors from there, save default config, reboot to test if config options took, done!
If additional monitor is left plugged in, system will install it as one display, not multiple monitors.
You can edit xorg.conf, but this is a mess, because other files are created (with the old settings) which will be called upon reboot if deleted, not found, mess.
PS. xrandr and arandr won't help much either.
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oh, that's a big improvement, with glitches, that didn't work before to use x itself, I know they were working on it, good to see it's actually half functioning now.

Now if the free software world could hunker down and focus on fully functioning in these key areas, that would be very useful and helpful for desktop adoption. ie, 'just works' is something people really appreciate.
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