[plug] Multiple Xservers

[Nick Bannon]

On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 06:54:43AM +0000, Trevor Phillips wrote:
[...]
> But Windows can have multiple displays on multiple monitors; Linux is still
> catching up to this. (Yay Xfree4! Can't wait till there's Matrox Dual-Head
> support...)
[...]

Catchup? <cough> <splutter>

The "lack" of that can be laid firmly at the foot of the PC architecture.
The ability to get multiple VGA cards to play nicely with one another
hasn't been a priority with PC hardware manufacturers, with the possible
exception of Matrox. A cute thing people have done is to have both a
VGA card and an MDA card (which don't clash) in the same machine for a
graphics and text console respectively.

X has always been nicely abstracted above this - there's no reason at
all why you can't have multiple X servers on multiple displays, whether
they be local consoles, networked terminals or completely virtual ones
(eg "vncserver"). Having one "display" spread out over multiple servers
is also possible (eg "x2x").

Besides, Macs have had multihead stuff working nicely for years. Draw
graphics on your pretty colour screen to the left, while laying them out
in a desktop publisher on your razor sharp A4 mono screen to the right,
that sort of thing. Drag the little screens about in the Monitors control
panel to reflect their physical positions. Swap them about to confuse
passers by. ::-)

Nick.

-- 
  Nick Bannon  | "I made this letter longer than usual because
nick at it.net.au | I lack the time to make it shorter." - Pascal