This. And flakey drivers.
I think this is a big step for Linux on the Desktop. I look forward to the day I can ditch OS X and Windows and replace it with a Unix that has a nice UI, stability, and is open.
I think this is a big step for Linux on the Desktop. I look forward to the day I can ditch OS X and Windows and replace it with a Unix that has a nice UI, stability, and is open.
I've started using Unity (shock, horror) and the whole thing provides such a polished experience that most of the time I forget that I'm using a desktop linux distro. Problem is that when everything is so well polished, problems stemming from bad drivers (nvidia) become really jarring.
I'm hoping that wayland will go a long way to addressing this somehow.
IIRC the nvidia Linux drivers actually replace parts of X with their own proprietary stuff which makes things hairy when integrating with software designed around "standard" X.
For example nvidia "twinview" seems to make many applications believe that my two 1920x1080 monitors are actually a single 3840x1080 monitor. I can correct this by using a seperate X session for each monitor but then this stops compiz from working.
In fact, none of the GPU vendors with closed-source drivers are providing kernel mode-setting, which would be essential for Wayland.
NVidia ships Xrandr in 302 drivers (now in beta, available to ubuntu in ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates) so this should be a problem of the past.
It's been very annoying though, especially games which try to be clever and position the window centered on the screen or maximize to full screen have been half on the left and half on the right monitor.
SDL_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_DISPLAY=1
SDK_VIDEO_FULLSCREEN_HEAD=1
What surprises me, given the number of programmers that use 2 monitors. How does this stuff not get found when applications are being tested?
Not like it would be a difficult fix either, just test for weird resolutions like 3840x1080 then ask the user "are you using 2 monitors?", if they answer yes then adjust the rendering target.