Triple display nvidia + Intel

Haven’t used Linux in a long time (since 2008) I have forgotten a lot of stuff and so many thing have changed I feel a bit lost. I’m trying to set up my nvidia 550ti with the binary nvidia driver and my intergrated intel graphics on my i5 2500k to work nicely together. The only thing I need is all three monitors going, one desktop, three monitors.

When I first installed ubuntu it appeared to have worked with the built in open source drivers but I was getting weird lock ups and graphical glitches. Reading up on the newest nvidia driver (319.32) it now supports RandR 1.4, XRandR, better UEFI support, and new GPU support. Since I’m runing a UEFI system, and I plan on getting a 760 soon, I figured install the driver and see if that fixes anything. Well it worked perfectly, the system is stable and all of my glitches are gone, but the third display pluged into my motherboard still doesnt seem to work. Whats weird is that the display is not on standby, the power led is on and it seems to be receiving a signal.

Heres what I’ve tried so far

Changing the primary graphics in my bios to integrated (that shut off my first two displays all together)
Setting the primary graphics to Auto (that changed nothing)

I know that to use three displays off of a Fermi card I need two identical cards in SLI, thats why I’m trying to use my 550ti and the built in intel graphics

Here is the current output for

sudo lspci | grep VGA
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] (rev a1)

Here is the output for

sudo lshw -C video
*-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:16 memory:f4000000-f5ffffff memory:e0000000-e7ffffff memory:e8000000-ebffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:f6000000-f607ffff
  *-display
       description: Display controller
       product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 09
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: msi pm bus_master cap_list
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:53 memory:f6400000-f67fffff memory:d0000000-dfffffff ioport:f000(size=64)

So it seems to me that my Intel graphics are detected, for some reason I can’t see the third display in System Settings> Displays

I will upload my current Xorg config and hope that someone can help me set up all three displays with xinerama or some alternative

Here is the Xorg config the NVIDIA settings tool gave me (I have yet to replace the modified one with my original, I don’t want to break anything)

I’d be astonished if you could do something like this in Linux.

Remember that in desktop form Linux is at least 20 to 30 years behind the alternatives.

If you do get the 760 then you’ll just run all three displays off of that single card. So I’m not sure if it’s worth the frustration in the meantime, but if it is… the only thing I can come up with is running two separate X servers with each loading its own display driver (NVIDIA, Intel) and then you’d have two separate X screens… which of course won’t be joined into a single desktop. But I don’t think you can do that because then how would the keyboard and mouse work between the two X servers?

Can it honestly be that hard for a seasoned Linux user to set that up, I would imagine its as simple as having the right config and making sure the driver gets loaded on boot. Xinerama has been around for a long time and I have seen many people report success with it. I can’t imagine why this wouldn’t work.

  1. Load the Intel’s VGA driver for the device
  2. Set it up as second screen.

Worked for years and years like that. Before Windows even had that support AFAIK (2+ video drivers per box was only supported in Windows 7, Vista doesn’t have that support.)

I have 2 X servers running off of one video card (mostly to fix full screen modes).

Section “Device”
Identifier “Videocard0”
Driver “nvidia”
VendorName “NVIDIA Corporation”
BoardName “GeForce 9400 GT”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0”
Screen 0
EndSection

Section “Device”
Identifier “Videocard1”
Driver “nvidia”
VendorName “NVIDIA Corporation”
BoardName “GeForce 9400 GT”
BusID “PCI:1:0:0”
Screen 1
EndSection

then setup screens that use 2 devices and done.

You will not be able to move windows from one X screen to another, but that is not a most of the time. You can specify where one screen is w.r.t. the other screen (left, right, up, down)… etc…