Getting Xinerama windows on the right screen
Just in from Meilof’s Q&A department: how to get Xinerama windows on the right screen.
Here’s the deal. I have a NVIDIA card with TV-out, which is great (hint: use nvtv to remove the borders around the image on the TV screen… just figured that out). Under Linux, there are basically two ways of using screens: with or without Xinerama. The latter option means the two screens are ‘appended’ to each other, making it possible to have the one half of a window on one physical screen, and the other half at another. Otherwise, different screens are just what they are: different screens.
I used the non-Xinerama approach for some time, but for some reason, my RealPlayer wouldn’t start on the second screen (yeah I know, should file a bug), so I decided to try Xinerama, which works well, but…
Metacity, GNOME’s Window Manager, has the irritating property of placing new windows on the second screen (presumably because that’s the emptiest one or so), but having your mail on the TV while you’re wondering where it went gets a bit irritating after a while.
Luckily, I found the good people at the University of Queensland have a patch for Metacity to fix this. Unfortunately, they only have RPMs while I built GNOME from source, so I isolated the patch if you need it, too. Still applies to the current Metacity CVS.