I just got a second monitor so I can have dual screens on my desktop computer. Upgrading to 12.04, using BIOS to set my main graphic processor to "onboard", and changing the nvidia x server settings to the "seperate x screen" configuration, I was able to succeed in getting Dual Monitors, which I am very proud to have accomplished. The sacrifice seems to have been that I lost some of the cool effects of the sliders, [alt]+[tab] changer looks like windows 95, the workspace changer doesn't work, I cannot access my display preferences outside of the Nvidia X Server. When I go to display preferences, I get this pop-up "Could not get screen information" "RANDR extension is not present". I could be wrong, but it looks like the effects of Unity were disabled when Nvidia took over the Display preferences. How do I return my computer to the fresh look I had when I first installed precise Pangolin and have dual Monitors at the same time?
More info:
My main monitor is plugged into my Graphics card expansion listed as NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210], my secondary Monitor is plugged into the VGA port in my Motherboard's I/O Panel which is listed as NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a]. I have the accelerated graphics driver "Nvidia accelerated graphics driver (post release updates)(current version updates)" installed.
Here's my Hardware specs from typing
sudo lshw. http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/944869/.Also I ran
LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfoand got this: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/944871/This is what I got when I entered this command:
lspci -nn | grep VGA00:0d.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 7025 / nForce 630a] [10de:03d6] (rev a2) 02:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210] [10de:0a65] (rev a2)My Motherboard Model is ASRock N68-VS3 UCC
you must attach a second monitor to the GFX second video port
EDIT: you cannot have the second monitor attached to the inbuilt motherboard video output, attach the second monitor to the second video output present on the graphics card, like misery said you can only use one video card at a time, either the dedicated video card or GFX card as i call it, or the internal, how old is your PC, by the looks of your video card specs i think pretty old as no graphics card since past 3-4 years had made available VGA on its card, they either have a DVI or HDMI and that too two of those!!!
In general Ubuntu supports multiple monitors very well. Thanks to Gnome even better than Windows. Please read this post. I have described there how to make work (if possible) two VGA cards. Anyway I have tested 10.04 with two nVidia cards and three monitors using Xinerama and it worked absolutely great.
Ok so a few things that I realized I was doing backwards. One was that it was a lot easier to keep the both monitors plugged into the same graphics card. I went in circles trying to get it to work outside out of the motherboard, so I bit the bullet and got a DVI to VGA adaptor, plugged everything in right and got immediate results. I went back into BIOS and turned everything back to default settings. Rebooted and immediately went to the nvidia x server and switched to Twin View. Everything went back to normal. Blender worked, workspace switcher was still a little wonky, so I said "screw it" I know what I did wrong, backed up everything, download the new 12.04 installation DVD, and started from scratch. When it was all installed and most of my files returned to their homes, I knew just what to do and I told NVidia to put everything in Twinview, and its been smooth sailing since. I was a fool, but now I have learned my lesson. Thanks to everyone who helped me out! If anyone has anymore questions about what I did wrong and right, let me know.