Using Gnome and a dual monitor setup isn't ideal.
Using Gnome and a dual monitor setup isn't ideal.
Hi, when using two monitors, getting the second one to function properly is challenging. Once it works, it remains tied to whatever window you're using, and switching workspaces causes issues only with the first monitor. The second display appears as a fixed screen, which is frustrating. Also, audio from the first monitor can't be routed through the display port, leaving no sound when both are active. This makes it hard to use the second monitor effectively. Is this the expected behavior? Are there ways to fix this problem?
My recollection of gnome was that it had many issues. I’m quite outdated, but since it’s Linux you can pick from different desktop environments.
After about 20 years, gnome seems to have improved significantly. Given my preference for Wayland, KDE comes to mind despite its problems, and Sway is appealing because of its tiling WMs—though I don’t like them. I’d love to see a Wayland compositor for Wayland, but it doesn’t exist yet. It’s surprising we can’t use Gnome with multiple monitors.
This is a fun topic for me. The first open source contribution I ever made was to gnome for config files relating to multi monitor setups in version 2.18. I recommend you give this blog entry from gnome a read since it is about this. But, the short answer is that workspaces only on your primary monitor is the default configuration. The key for changing this is ` workspaces-only-on-primary`. Changing this will give you workspaces across all your monitors. Here's how that'll look . This is very different from macOS, where all of your monitors have they're own number and state for spaces, but the gnome devs are pretty committed to this model.
You're asking how to adjust that configuration and why it might not be available. It seems the feature isn't listed in the standard settings, which could mean it's either missing or requires a different approach. The current setup uses horizontal workspaces, but having many monitors side by side is challenging. Ideally, each monitor should have its own set of workspaces, which would suit most multi-monitor configurations. However, this option isn't present, or perhaps it's not supported. Your main concerns are audio issues with the second monitor and the need for per-monitor scaling without a single global setting. You're frustrated because you've tried similar solutions before and haven't received help from others.
You can adjust settings through gsettings in the Terminal or use dconf-editor for a graphical interface. I find the default approach better than the alternative where workspaces share across monitors. The macOS method, assigning separate spaces to each display, is preferable to me. However, I’m aware that no Linux desktop currently supports this feature. Doing it manually with xrandr works but looks poor. GTK and Qt applications don’t handle scaling this way. Today I use 1440p resolution, which makes scaling acceptable. But at 4k, scaling to 100% caused issues—some UI elements distorted or appeared too small. Changing text size in app menus would look odd, with some items much larger or smaller than intended. This is especially problematic when dragging windows between displays, as redraws likely didn’t update smoothly. Someone with more recent Linux multi-monitor experience might have better insight into how scaling behaves per display.
Thanks --- why don't they put it into the settings where it belongs? It makes the 2nd monitor usless and is the worst option. I don't understand how it could even occur to anyone to do it like this, let alone implement it. It's sick and totally idiotic. That's what they need to come up with ... I can understand that historically there was this idea of using a 2nd monitor and it seemed to make sense to pretend that the whole display would go over two monitors. That even works with more than 2 monitors. But it gets kinda difficult when these monitors don't all have the same resolution. And now, especially with their stupid idea of forcing the workspaces all into one row instead of allowing us to have multiple rows, the only option that does make sense is that each monitor has their own set of workspaces. Oh that works fine now. I have a 4k display and the 2nd one does 1920x1200. That makes the scaling a bit too large for the 2nd one. Scaling per monitor is basically a must have. xrandr doesn't work with wayland. There is some equivalent the name of which I always can't remember, and it's probably not exactly the same. With wayland, I still can't even alter the configuration of my keyboard the way I need to and am forced to use a keyboard with an US layout which I'm lucky to have. It used to be easy with xmodmap ... Well, when a window is being redrawn, why shouldn't it be redrawn according to the scaling factor of the monitor it is being redrawn on. It's not like it's unknown which monitor that is. From what I've been reading, wayland is very ill conceived in some regards in that it leaves everything up to the program trying to show a window, and not even window decorations are being provided so that there would be at least some consistency. Apparently that has lead to having to do all kinds of complicated stuff in the toolkits, like GTK and KDE, so that not every program needs to reinvent the wheel in order to show a window when it uses these tookits. It's another one of these anti-fixes which makes things easier in one (fundamental) place and screws everything else up and makes everything very difficult everywhere else. If there is an advantage to it, scaling per monitor would only mean that the toolkits, which do the drawing anyway, would need to consider the current scaling factor, which they already need to do anyway. Do you have an idea how I could keep the audio going to the display port instead of HDMI when the 2nd monitor is enabled? Without that, enabling the 2nd monitor is pointless. My graphics card has a bunch of display port connectors and only one HDMI, but no, the sound goes invevitably to the HDMI connector and can't be switched back. How stupid is that and how could anyone have the idea that audio should suddenly switch to another monitor just because the user enables that monitor. How can they not have tested this before releasing the software.
Acknowledged, the issue lies in the multitasking feature where it's hard to locate. As long as the second monitor isn't active and I can't control it easily, I remain with one screen. The support for multiple monitors is quite old and hasn't resolved the problem.