I am working in my Lab with 2 19′ LCD Monitors. I have search Google about this issue when I finished installing Ubuntu 9.04 and I was unable to configure to use 2 monitors.
My desktop computer’s configuration:
- Intel(R) Core(M) 2 Quad CPU Q6600
- DDR3 4GB
- ATI Radeon HD2600XT
After I try to install ATI Drivers supported from ATI website I have figured out how to configure Ubuntu 9.04 to work with 2 monitors and I found some intersting thing as well. In this case, I am using 2 digital ports of those monitors.
Step 1: Install driver
Install ATI Driver from ATI website instead of driver from Synaptic: How to install ATI Graphic driver for Ubuntu 9.04
If you used ATI driver from synaptic, you should disable this by going to menu System -> Administration -> Hardware drivers, and install the driver again.
Step 2: Configure
Firstly, open the Catalyst Control Center by going to Applications menu and choose ATI Catalyst Control Center (super – user) or type this command in the Terminal: amdxdg-su -c amdcccle
In the tab Display Manager, you will be able to config 2 monitors to work Independently by choosing Single (Independent display)
Note that, now you can reboot your system and see what will happend, because you can face the resolution issue that you can’t configure again in the next step. If you got the lower resolution you can change by going to the properties tab on above figure. Don’t worry about that, you can do it.
The interesting thing is you can have 2 monitors work independently. 2 monitors seem to be separate from each other and you can’t drag a application from this monitor to other monitor. If you like this option, you can keep it and don’t need to follow next step.
If you want to drag windows from this monitors to other, you can enable Xinerame feature in the Display Option tab:
Important notice
If you upgrade the new Linux kernel, you might have a display problem, you can fix it by using root terminal at bootup screen to install ATI Driver again based on step 1.
I have success to configure dual monitorss on my system, and enjoy my time hehe.
Have fun.