[Solved] Dual Screens Nvidia 9800gt

[xboxboy]

Hi all.
Having issues getting dual screens set up. My existing setup was:
Acer x123w monitor connected via DVI
Nvidia 9800GT using proprietary driver.

I've added an old TV screen via HDMI

But, I can't seem to get it to work, and now I've made matters worse

Now system settings (kde) doesn't even have two monitors listed, neither does nvidia-settings. I'm unsure where to go from here.

TIA

[xboxboy]

Interesting:

I unplugged the DVI cable, no change.

I rebooted with the DVI cable unpluged, and the display came up on the HDMI monitor.
I then plugged the DVI cable in, and I then had 2 displays: So I configured it how I wanted: Saved and rebooted.

All fixed!

[doktor5000]

If you'd be using the free driver (nouveau) it should be plug&play.
When I'm using my work laptop at home, after plugging in my monitor via displayport, it automatically switches to extended desktop on both displays.

[xboxboy]

Ah, did not know that. I've been using the nvidia proprietary driver for years. From way back in the early geforce days..... Never had much luck with the AMD stuff, so always stuck with Nvidia Proprietary.

[doktor5000]

Me too. But it's also good to know, that the proprietary driver has it's drawbacks.

[xboxboy]

Could you expand on that? Is it purely from a 'free' point of view?
IIRC are Nvidia now contributing to noveau driver?

[doktor5000]

Could you expand on that? Is it purely from a 'free' point of view?

Nope, I don't care about that. For me it's only about practical terms. I'm pragmatic, use what works
Was referring more to e.g. the missing KMS framebuffer driver, e.g. with grub2 you won't have tty's by default if you don't add "nomodeset" to grub config. And the tty resolution/size is not that good.
But it's pretty good from a performance point of view, I've got some windows games running perfectly under wine.

IIRC are Nvidia now contributing to noveau driver?

Yes, they do since quite some time now.

[tlmiller]

Was referring more to e.g. the missing KMS framebuffer driver, e.g. with grub2 you won't have tty's by default if you don't add "nomodeset" to grub config. And the tty resolution/size is not that good.

Agreed on those irritations with the proprietary driver. I keep bouncing back and forth between free and propriatary because of that on my desktop. I love the performance, but losing the tty's kills me since at heart, I vastly prefer working in CLI for system management.

[doktor5000]

Well, tty's are working fine here. Why do you lose your tty's ?