TwinView with a Dell E248WFP

So I received my Dell 24 inch LCD finally, after being told they were out of stock for a while... The colour is certainly more vibrant than my new Precision M6300 laptop screen, but I don't know if it's a good vibrant...

My setup is two X screens side by side. The laptop is on the right, and the LCD in the centre. You can use the real nVidia twinview, which should require xinerama support where available, but I didn't like the second display not having it's own gnome panels.

Both displays are 1920x1200. I used nvidia-xconfig and some manual tweaking to get it right. Note I backed up my xorg.conf file first to xorg.conf-20080728 so that I could run nvidia-xconfig multiple times from the same starting point:

sudo nvidia-xconfig -c /etc/X11/xorg.conf-20080728 -o /etc/X11/xorg.conf --separate-x-screens --no-constant-dpi --use-edid --use-edid-dpi --damage-events --render-accel

Now, this default setup creates an xorg.conf file that places the login screen on the primary display - the laptop. Annoying if you have the LCD in the centre. Simply swapping "Screen 0" and Screen 1" in the ServerLayout doesn't work, as the first screen will still be assigned to the laptop. You must force which screen is the primary screen by using UseDisplayDevice. In each "Screen" section, add:

    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-0"

for the laptop LCD (or DFP), and

     Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP-2"

for the external LCD. You may find yours is DFP-1. I use the DVI so perhaps DFP-1 is for the VGA.

Take note of the Identifiers for the two screens, and change the serverlayout to show:

    Screen      0  "DefaultScreen (2nd)"
    Screen      1  "DefaultScreen" RightOf "DefaultScreen (2nd)"

Then restart X. The 0th screen is the "primary" screen, which will have your log-in window and all your usual panels and applets. The 1st screen has a default blank Gnome installation (if you use Gnome), but with the same background.

You could rename the Identifiers to make them a bit more readable.

The resultant xorg.conf file is on pastebin.

poRblems:
So far, the EDID DPI detection doesn't work, so applications that support the DPI and resize themselves aren't doing so for me, depending on the screen. Emacs does look a bit wierd on a 24 inch monitor, when the DPI is set for a 17 inch LCD!

hibernate a Dell Precision M6300 with nvidia-drivers

This is not a howto, just a collection of information that helped me.
$ uptime
22:05:42 up 9 days, 46 min, 1 user, load average: 1.78, 1.41, 0.91
Unfortunately, that will go back to 0, as I have to reboot for a new kernel!

So it appears there is some difficulty getting Nvidia's proprietary drivers to hibernate nicely. Had I known I might have stuck with an ATI video card for my next laptop (enter the Nvidia vs ATI flamewar. Of course, the whole argument is pointless, because everyone makes ultimatums like "I will never buy <brandname> again", based on one or two experiences, often with known old or buggy hardware.)

I have tried in the past to hibernate this laptop, but not succeeded. Common problems include:

• Suspend ok, but resume locks up
• Suspend locks up
• Corrupted video, etc

Recently I decided to have another go. To my surprise, it worked without much hassle! Firstly, the specs:

• Dell Precision M6300 (laptop!)
  
• 64-bit Intel core-2 duo
• nVidia Quadro FX 1600M with 256Mb RAM
• 17" WUXGA 1920 X 1200 LCD

lspci identifies the video card as: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 040d (rev a1) with the id: 10de:040d.

Now for the software. I use gentoo, but you'll be able to glean the relevant version number from these names:

• tuxonice-sources-2.6.25-r3 and tuxonice-sources-2.6.26*
  
• v86d-0.1.5.2 (Note: so far hibernate is incompatible with fbcondecor)
• hibernate-script-1.99
• nvidia-drivers-173.14.09
• gcc version 4.1.2 (Gentoo 4.1.2 p1.0.2)
  

Instructions for installing and configuring are all over the web. Google is your friend! Two useful links:

• http://wiki.tuxonice.net/DistroAndHardwareSetup/Nvidia
• http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=79295

Note1: I think the results are quite version specific, so try a number of combinations before you give up (yes, it's time consuming)
Note2: I use the filewriter, because I don't use swap <boast Who needs it with 4Gb RAM?!/> Look at my kernel config for more details.
Note3: Make sure you can suspend successfully without the nvidia kernel module installed first, otherwise this info will be of little use to you!

Also, my config files:
[Note these will be paste-binned soon]

• kernel .config
• hibernate's suspend2.conf and common.conf

Problems:

• on resume, GL actions all have a delay of a few seconds before operating. eg. a GL screensaver will show nothing for 3 seconds before starting. You can fix this by stopping X, reloading the nvidia module, and restarting X.
  

*2.6.26 works much better with resuming - no great pauses, however Intel Wireless WiFi 4965AGN (IWL4965) doesn't work...

I think that's all you'll need to replicate my setup. Let me know your success / failure with other versions / distros!