At work I'm beginning to take on more than just IT--for better or worse I'm starting to learn the GIS world and I'm learning some CAD. I have a couple problems here. I have a good workstation: Sun Ultra 24 with dual Intel Core 2 Quads @ 2.40GHz and 8GB of RAM. That's not a problem. But I need a 64-bit operating system to use all that power. And my CAD and GIS software is, unfortunately, Windows only. (We are locked into Autodesk and ESRI... don't argue with me, it's the way it is for now, though I'm trying to use as much FOSS as possible.) Vista 64? Not a chance. See... actually I tried it. Although Civil3D and ArcGIS are both supposedly Vista 64-bit compatible, they aren't really. Things break. Things crash. Things go bump hourly. Hourly. I don't like force quitting and restarting these programs hourly. XP 64? Maybe. I haven't tried it, honestly. I didn't want to attempt it only to find out that there are still 64-bit gotchas. So... what am I doing?

I'm running 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04 (the FOSS I do use for GIS has some issues on 8.10... something to do with python, I think) with plain old 32-bit XP running in a virtual machine. I'm using VMware Workstation due to the fact that we own it and it still has better features overall compared to VirtualBox. But there's more to my dilemma. My daily life is in my MacBook Pro. My email is there. My notes are there. My everything is in there, basically. And yes, I can use Linux for all those things relatively comfortably, but not as nicely as in OS X. My home is that laptop. So I installed Vine Server on the laptop and can stay connected to it from Linux without shifting to my second mouse and keyboard or having to resort to a kvm connection.

So, I've got big honking windows applications that need lots of real estate. I can't get by with them without dual monitors. And I've got my bash shell where I'm dealing with our PostGIS database and all the other IT stuff I'm doing, along with a variety of other things happening in the host OS. And I'm watching my laptop. I need 4 displays. I have 3. Driven by 2 video cards.

Or get the full size here: http://www.tuirgin.com/img/3Screen3OS.png

It's taken some time fooling around with my xorg.conf to get it all working right. I ended up using nvidia-settings, then making some manual edits, and then went back and made some more changes in nvidia-settings again. The end result is that it works pretty much the way I wanted it to.

For some reason I had to maximize my XP window in the 2nd display, then extend it with VMware's multiple display functionality to the 1st display. It didn't work correctly going from the 1st to the 2nd monitor. When I did that, XP just saw one huge display which is a headache when dealing with my programs that I want maximized on my bigger display with supporting flyouts and toolbars on the smaller display.

I don't suppose this is of any interest to anyone but myself, but there it is. I'll include my xorg.conf below.

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Default Layout"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 2960 0
    Screen      1  "Screen1" LeftOf "Screen0"
    Screen      2  "Screen2" LeftOf "Screen1"
EndSection

Section "Module"
    Load           "glx"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "Xinerama" "1"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Generic Keyboard"
    Driver         "kbd"
    Option         "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option         "XkbModel" "pc105"
    Option         "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Configured Mouse"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Configured Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "ViewSonic VP930 Series"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 75.0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor1"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Proview"
    HorizSync       31.0 - 80.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor2"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "ViewSonic VP930 Series"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 82.0
    VertRefresh     50.0 - 75.0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Configured Video Device"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro NVS 290"
    BusID          "PCI:2:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 7950 GT"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          0
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Videocard2"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce 7950 GT"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
    Screen          1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Default Screen"
    Device         "Configured Video Device"
    Monitor        "Configured Monitor"
    DefaultDepth    24
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen1"
    Device         "Videocard2"
    Monitor        "Monitor1"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Videocard0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen2"
    Device         "Videocard1"
    Monitor        "Monitor2"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "TwinView" "0"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-1: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
EndSection