Multiple Monitors in Ubuntu

Update, 2011-06-01:  grumble, this is broken again in Ubuntu 11.04.  I currently don’t have a solution, and I’m just working without my external monitor.  Not goodness.

I recently updated all my ZaReason boxen to Ubuntu 10.04, and managing multiple monitors in this update is easier than it used to be.

Kubuntu Jaunty, WPA-PSK wireless, SSID broadcast disabled, now working

I made a clean install of Kubuntu Jaunty (9.04) last week, and had some trouble getting wireless networking to work.  This post explains my current working configuration.

Windows, iTunes, iPod, and Linux can coexist (part 8)

I feel much better about buying from the iTunes Store than I did before I went down this path.  I’m no longer “locked in” to Apple as my sole source for purchasing music, but I will continue to buy music there as long as their iTunes Store maintains compelling usability.  I’d use iTunes Store over amazonmp3 on the Linux side, too, if Apple would develop a Linux version.  Actually, a Linux version would be less of a technical stretch for Apple than a Windows version, but I’m no more interested in Apple rants than I am in DRM rants.

Windows-iTunes-iPod-Rhythmbox-Kubuntu music loop

Windows, iTunes, iPod, and Linux can coexist (part 1)

I’m running iTunes 8 on a WinXP box at my work.  I’ve got a Windows-formatted iPod Photo.  I buy music on iTunes Store from work, and it all plays on my Kubuntu machine at home (using Rhythmbox) via my iPod.  I buy Amazon MP3s from my Kubuntu machine, and those play just fine on the iPod and my WinXP box.

productive coexistence

extend Kubuntu desktop to second screen

Update, 2010-06-19:  I use a different approach than the one described in this post since I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04.

I successfully extended my Kubuntu desktop to a second monitor.  I’m running Kubuntu 8.04 (updated on 2009-07-03 for 9.04) on a ZaReason BigLap, with an Intel video card and a Dell external monitor (connected via VGA cable – the BigLap doesn’t have a DVI interface).

look Ma, no video driver

While tinkering today, I managed to bring my ZaReason BigLap to its knees by installing an incompatible video driver.  No matter, James’ post over at elwoodicious guided me to my /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, which I thought I’d probably have to nurse back to life using his xorg.conf as an example.

But somebody upstream in my Kubuntu stack was thinking ahead:  hey, this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing when it comes to video drivers.  When I rebooted to command line, I found backups of all my interim xorg.confs from earlier this afternoon.  Replaced the corrupted one with a backup just by looking at the timestamp, resumed the boot process, Booyah Achieved.

some good stuff I missed

Software I explored today:

• OGRE 3D – an open-source graphics rendering engine (with physics intentionally omitted)
• Mercurial & Git/Cogito – distributed source control management tools (yes, I did watch this whole hour with Linus – he had no kind words for SVN)
• Test soon – a unit testing framework for C++, not of the xUnit family
• QEMU w/ KQEMU – an open-source PC emulator, with flexible host/guest options, with “near native” performance
• Valgrind – an open-source profiling tool
• open-source physics engines – further study needed to narrow down list
• EGM96 – Earth Gravitational Model, Fortran
• Capistrano – a tool for automating tasks on one or more remote servers, Ruby-based

Finally, I’ll probably make Ubuntu my distro of choice, (at least partially) since a space guy created it.