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Stefano Palazzo
Asked: 2011-04-29 08:46:39 +0800 CST

How can I put the Launcher on the other display?

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When I plug an external monitor into my laptop, the laptop screen is still considered my primary display. Since my laptop is on the right of my external monitor, I now have the Launcher sort of "in the middle".

How do I get the Launcher and the BFB onto my external monitor?

11.04

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    currently there is no way to chose which monitor the launcher shows up on. there is an open bug about this issue on launchpad.

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  2. There are a couple of workarounds though (including one from the bug Alex mentioned) that worked for me.

    Initially, I was using the open source "radeon" driver and this worked:

    • Edit the file ~/.config/monitors.xml
    • You should see configurations listed for both displays. Find the "output" section for the display you want to make primary and look for: <primary>no</primary> and change it to <primary>yes</primary>.
    • Log out of Unity (or reboot) and log back in.

    This, however, did not work for me after I switched to the proprietary "fglrx" driver. Thankfully I found another workaround: xrandr

    • run xrandr | grep " connected ". This will give you the names of your connected displays. You should be able to distinguish which display is external from the resolution xrandr reports. In my case it is DPF1.
    • to set DFP1 to primary run: xrandr --output DFP1 --primary
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