I have just completed the BETA release of MultiMon, which allows for
multiple monitors under Linux. It supports VGA/EGA and CGA/MDA. This
allows you to have a dual-monitor system (or if you have strange, modified
hardware, an n monitor system). Most of the bugs in the last release have
been fixed, and it works slickly, even with X. Unfortunately, there is
still a problem with SVGALib, X and Dosemu, which might not be fixable in
the kernel (these things still work with it - see the readme).
It is available on:
tsx-11 (I don't know where yet, I just uploaded it today)
sunsite (soon, appears to be temporarily down)
deathstar.res.cmu.edu:/pub/development/multimon-BETA/multimon-0.2.tar.gz
(may be up and down sporadically because I kernel hack a lot, but very
rarely down for more than 1/2 hour)
>From the README:
NOTES:
This is a BETA release - there may be bugs or unimplemented features, and
I can take no responsibility for any damages to your computer. This may
sound spooky, but it is just another part of legal hocus-pocus. I am
solidly confident in the code, as it is working on my machine, and am just
as confident that it will work on other machine with standard VGA/mono
combinations. However, I don't have the hardware to test other monitor
configurations, so there may be bugs with particular hardware.
The patches are against the 1.3.68 kernel console driver, and should work on
the latest kernels in the 66-70 series.
Ok, first of all, these patches do not work with a DEC PCI TGA card.
Hopefully soon they will. (as I said last time. Now I have discovered that
this card is used only on Alpha chip platforms. If anyone has any
information on how plug and play works on Alphas, or how this card works, I
would be greatly obliged).
There are no longer two distributed patches - you cannot ifdef this anymore.
My reasoning behind this is that it is pretty easy to back out of the patch
with .orig files. So if you patch the code, you don't need to reconfigure
anymore (this makes CONFIG_MULTIMON kind of useless, but...)
FEATURES:
1) Multiple (not just dual) monitor support
2) Support for non-standard hardware
3) Fix for some non-compatible monochrome cards that can't hide cursor
properly (NEW)
4) Screen blanking working on all monitors (NEW)
5) Multiple, changeable (but not moveable) virtual consoles on each monitor
6) Cursor tracking - cursor appears only on current console (NEW)
7) Mouse support on all monitors
8) All terminal emulation types supported, gettys adjustable to provide
different numbers of consoles without recompiling.
9) Other monitors update while in X
10) Different monitors may have different console sizes
Zachary Amsden
E-mail: amsden@andrew.cmu.edu
root@deathstar.res.cmu.edu