Edit: I’m glad so many of you have had no issues with multiple monitors. My set up is a little unusual (3rd display is an infrequently used large tv hooked through the receiver) and is definitely solveable but will take some effort (and honestly, I’d rather spend my spare time outside or with friends, so who knows when I’ll fix it.)
I’m another data point where displays work under Linux better than Windows, making this particular example amusingly wrong.
This is a Dell precision laptop with a dual usb-c connected docking station. Intel cpu plus a discrete nvidia gpu.
Using Cinnamon in X11 on Linux Mint or LMDE, works great.
Using KDE Plasma in Wayland on Debian? Works great!
Using Windows 10? Bzzzt.
I think I’ve had Linux DEs occasionally forget my monitor order & rotation just like Windows would, but out of the box Windows wouldn’t even use all my monitors.
I don’t think a lived experience can be amusingly wrong but to each their own?
My issue comes because my set up is highly unusual, the third display is an infrequently used tv that’s connected through a receiver. With a little bit of fighting I have a workable albeit inconvenient system. A fix is possible but as stated in the meme, it’ll take some effort etc.
I assume they mean that the general sense of “Switching to Linux is easy! I’m still fiddling with basic things but any day now…” doesn’t reflect their own experience, nor that of many others who had less trouble with displays under Linux.
In that context “I have an unusual setup” is an important note: It’s not that Linux struggles with basic things, but that it struggles with some uncommon things that nobody ever built and shipped a proper solution for.
Absolutely true and well put.
I should have said “third display” instead of “all” because my unusual setup is important context. Honestly, I’m also probably not highlighting that enough when evangelizing about it.
To me, a big chunk of the excitement of linux is that regardless of whether linux or someone else is better out of the box, with linux, I can change whatever needs changing. There will always be some tinkering left and nothing stopping me from it!
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My internal dialogue during social events: dont talk about linux, dont talk about foss, dont talk about rodents.
The design history of the XFCE logo has entered the chat.
I haven’t had trouble getting displays working since 2007.
I have…
It’s my fault. I bought a Denon reciever and it’s a gigantic piece of shit that loses signal when switching between VRR and…not VRR.
So I used two HDMI cables. One connects directly to TV, the other still goes to the reciever for audio. I can’t disable the secondary non existent screen because it’ll also disable HDMI audio…at least with KDE.
70% of the time I shut off the TV with the PC still on no matter what power settings, the audio dies until I press ctrl+super+F2 to switch to TTY and then F1 to swap back. Idk. It didn’t used to do this but after some CachyOS update it started happening. On Windows I was just fucked and had to reboot, so not any better.
I blame that piece of shit reciever. At some point I have to eat the loss and return to Yamaha.
Look at this guy, running a headless workstation
It’s because one of my three is a sporadically used tv that’s hooked up through my receiver system. Windows had trouble with it too and in more irritating ways. I just have to sit down and do some work to create a way to easily toggle between 1, 2 and 3 screen layouts/settings etc.
I have a similar use case with my PC and TV. My PC is across the house from the TV and is connected via an HDMI over Ethernet KVM for when I want to use my PC as a gaming console.
What I ended up doing was creating an automation in Home Assistant to turn on my KVM via a smart plug, then wake-on-lan my PC, and intiate a Steam Big Picture mode gamescope session. This was pretty tedious to get working all together, and startup time is pretty abysmal (around 1 minute to get fully into Steam), but it does actually work consistently.
In case anyone is interested in replicating my setup: I’m running NixOS 25.11 with the Jovian flake installed, and launching my session via the systemd service
run_gamescope. If you’re not on NixOS, you should still be able to build your own solution by emulating the Steam Deck startup services (honestly, it’s not that complicated), or looking into projects like ChimeraOS.I wound up using a physical switch that toggles a PC display off and toggles on the TV display so the system just slots it in. It only works because I don’t really need all three working at once (i.e. I just use the TV output to watch TV).
But yeah, neither windows or Linux handles dynamic display changes very well.
I’d posit Linux is still far superior. Especially with stupid little things, like one of my displays acts like it’s fully disconnected when it’s powered off at night. Which then tells Windows to disconnect the screen and fuck up all my app positions regardless of wether, “remember window positions based on connected screens” or what ever is set. It takes many seconds for that asshole to reinitialize the whole fucking desktop, always with programs in the wrong fucking place. Every. Time.
Linux doesn’t give a fuck, changes desktop layout instantly, doesn’t assume where I want my windows, and is by all accounts just far superior. I haven’t messed with this fresh install too much to know if there are weird little edge cases I’m not noticing, but so far, Linux is absolutely kicking Microsoft’s ass and taking its lunch money (I wish more than figuratively).
Good for you. I still can’t get Wayland to support more than one 144Hz display.
Works on my machine
Well, you’ve got two problems to start with:
- You’re using Wayland
- You fell for the superhuman refresh rate hype
You’re using Wayland
It works fine for everything else. Besides, X11 doesn’t even support two monitors with different refresh rates.
You fell for the superhuman refresh rate hype
And you fell for the good old “humans can only see in 35Hz”.
While humans cannot see 144hz explicitly, persistence of vision does not work like a monitor. Your vision DOES see differences. You can still notice how ‘smooth’ motion is at higher frame rates, etc.
That said, framerate isn’t the only stat that improves visual quality. Even wholly outside of color reproduction, having a monitor that supports blanking between frames (frame1, black, frame2, black, etc) can make even the same FPS ‘feel’ smoother and reduce ghosting and other effects from the panel.
Also, there is a BIG advantage of fast panels for variable refresh rates. Even if your game can never run past 60fps, a panel that can push updates very fast generally has a far greater ability to hit the rendered framerate, ‘feels’ more responsive at the same framerate, and often has a greater range of FPS they can support. Basically… there are many good reasons FreeSync has multiple tiers.
So basically… good job falling for ignorant dogma!
High FPS like 144 is noticeable in specific situations in specific games, mainly those with a lot of panning like fast paced FPS or racing games where things move quickly across the screen while the camera is also turning.
I had issues with it back in 2022 when trying a few different distros. I had 3 monitors of all the same size and I had weird visual glitches when trying to use the ui to set refresh rate or resolution.
Now though? Haven’t had any issues since i switched to Linux as my daily driver in 2024.
On my Windows laptop, multi displays barely work with any logic at all.
Last time I used macOS it pretended that displays worked fine (but they didn’t).
I’ve not used Linux much in hotplug monitor setups but I assume the situation can’t be worse.
In some ways better, some ways worse. I lile that not everything resizes incorrectly, several moments after changing the monitors. On the downside, linux assumes third monitor is always on etc which can get annoying.
End result is, currently (and this is probably solveable, I just need to devote the time to being indoors and on a computer) sitting down to watch things on tv is most easily managed by setting up with the regular monitor on etc. But working on the regular monitors or switching a monitor between one computer to another, is much better on linux.
I mean, they joke but inertia is Microsoft’s mightest weapon.
Literally just “My computer works now, why would I want to change it?”
Incidentally, getting someone on Linux (or Apple for that matter) to switch to Microsoft is also like pulling teeth.
Also, for many people, they don’t actually understand the difference between the device and the OS. You buy a laptop and thats the whole thing, including the OS.
Please leave my teeth, I am perfectly happy with arch.
He uses arch btw
Fake!
All those words and none were “Arch”.It was implied? 🤔🤪
My 3 monitor setup has been really fantastic after switching to Cosmic desktop. Really really loving the mix of tiling and non-tiling features too.
Tangential to OP but just wanted to throw Cosmic out there for folks who haven’t yet tried it.
Didn’t realize Cosmic went 1.0 in December. How is it? I tried it a few months ago and really liked the tiling features and overall feel, but it was still a bit rough around the edges.
Tbh I have no real complaints. I would eventually like some keyboard shortcuts for moving entire workspaces around without the mouse, but what is there is quite intuitive and I find myself not leaving the keyboard to navigate. The defaults are similar to i3 shortcuts.
I like that they work in tiling and non-tiling mode, and each workspace can be set to either mode at whim.
No issues with stability (which was a problem for me in earlier builds).
I don’t use any of the Cosmic utils, though (text editor, terminal, etc). They seem fine but ymmv.
Edit: actually just thought of one thing… If you move a window from a non-tiling workspace to a tiling one, it stays in non-tiling mode. This leads to a mixed mode workspace and I don’t like that. But it’s easily fixed with mode toggle and only a minor annoyance – ideally I want it to switch to whatever mode the workspace is in.
My displays are even more stable than Windows now. Wayland allows me to throw around applications to different workspaces and monitors that would have literally crashed if I ALT-TABed on Windows.
I gave up on getting multiple displays to work consistently on macOS and Windows years ago and just got an ultrawide instead.
My displays work great on Debian
Actual lol. I try not to be this guy until people bith about win 11 like they have no choice. you do!!
Multi monitor has never been more reliable for me than it is on Linux. The downside is that it’s not automated and I need to connect/disconnect them through the terminal.
Ah, what you’re looking for is called udev. It supplies the system with device events from the linux kernel.
This gist of it is, to use this command
udevadm monitor --environment --udevthen unplug and plug in your monitor. You should see the events on screen. You then write a rule and place it in /etc/udev/rules.d. To run a script add something like
ACTION=="change", SUBSYSTEM=="drm", KERNEL=="card0-HDMI-A-1", \ RUN+="/usr/local/monitor-script.sh"See the man udev page for more info (☞ﾟヮﾟ)☞
I’m familiar with udev rules. But it’s going to be more effort to write something that works with everything I might connect to than it is to just run xrandr each time. The way it is right now, it never fails and I don’t have to spend more than a minute tinkering with projector settings when I give a presentation.
Right!? It’s wild having to turn down the babes!
Who would be so heartless as to reject babes? Just look at that cute whittle face…
Made a switch to Kubuntu from win10. Did not turn back, did not boot even once to windows afterwards…
Sadly, I still have to use win11 on my work pc, so fml… every update it gets worse and worse…
