triple monitor hardware setup on FBSD - suggestions needed...

[Eric Kjeldergaard]

> I am currently running a triple-monitor setup under
> winXP, with an extended desktop that stretches across
> all three monitors.  I like it.
> 
> I would, however, like to use FreeBSD.

Good choice :)
 
> So, first off, what hardware (video card) comes to
> mind for doing triple screens with FreeBSD ?  A matrox
> P750 comes to mind, but when you run it with three
> screens, they downgrade to 1280x1024, which is bad.  I
> am happy to consider multiple video cards to
> accomplish this ... at the very least I need 1600x1200
> out of each card, preferably 1920x1200 ...

Well, as far as hardware goes for my tri-monitor, I usually have a
Radeon 7500 and an geforce2 mx400 (or some other cruddy pci card)
though I'm using a matrox G450 for the primary right now.  Really, any
combination of supported video cards will work about equally well.

> Second, what is the support for something like this in
> XFree86, or x.org ?  What I am really looking for is
> the ability to create virtually sized screens - so
> instead of having three total (physical) screens that
> I can maximize windows inside of, I want to split each
> physical screen in half for a total of 6 virtual
> screens - so there are six total areas within which I
> can maximize a window in ... this is something I am
> really trying to accomplish.

I'd like to say that this is a trivial thing to do, but I kind of
doubt that it is.  I know of no easy way to do this because X as it is
now, assigns a "head" to a screen (where by head I mean a video card
output) and in doing so, makes the "head" atomic in a sense.  What it
sounds like you'd like to do is create something smaller than this and
assign it to a screen.  It might be substantially easier to just
purchase more monitors or learn to use virtual desktops.  Good luck
finding something that suits you :)

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