Linux: setting up dual monitors with XRandR

My current employer gives me the opportunity to get familiar with quite a lot of his employees – they keep assigning a new desk to me every now and then, like once a week. I find making new friends and extending my social (scientific) network quite interesting and helpful.

And “change” is the challenge, that faces you with a plenty of tasks and experiences – and last not least extends your compentence 😎

Today I am settling at a desk with just one monitor. The desk’s monitor had been resisting to the charms of a second 19″ monitor, but I don’t really agree to that kind of reduced working conditions. I found the confirmation and the support of the sys admin (our connection: “.ro” ancestry 😆 ). But after I physically attached the 2nd screen (both through DVI), the left and the right monitor showed up as right and left. On my own SUSE Linux I would start yast straight away, but at work the sys admin was not around for a while …, so no yast right now.

But another helpful colleague pointed me to xrandr – and bingo!

Some web research lead to me this:

# lists the available monitors and their ids:
$ xrandr -q
…
# switches the logical side-by-side order:
# (maybe you will need it the other way round)
$ xrandr --auto --output DVI-I-2 --right-of DVI-I-3

Maybe somebody out there will find this text helpful. Writing it did in fact help me coping with the “pain of learning”  😯


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