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Right before the installfest we just had, I replaced Ubuntu 8.04 with Ubuntu 8.10 on my Dell D620, which I use with my TV as a second 1380x768 monitor running a separate X screen 1 using NVidia's tool, the built-in monitor being screen 0 at 1600x1050 (IIRC). I also moved from KDE to Gnome, in part because I had big problems with KDE[0], and in part because I despise KDE 4.1[1]. I was having problems getting the dual screen setup to work, and I actually brought the TV with me. JABR found out the problem was that the NVidia tool has to run as real root or the program fails silently to write out the config file; sudo was not enough. Easy fix. Thanks. I'm now facing a strange problem I can't even begin to theorize the cause of. It comes up with dual screens OK, and I get the wallpaper and menus on my TV. When I try to run a program on the TV screen from the menus (like mythfrontend), it works. If I run it from the icon on the gnome panel (to the right of the menu), even though it's executing the same command, I get a dialog box titled "Error" with absolutely nothing in it. Clicking on the X to close the window makes it flash, but it doesn't go away. At that point, neither menu or gnome panel icons work, and top says gnome-panel is taking 100% CPU (which I believe, because the fans go crazy. But this is a Core2Duo, so I can still do other things). I can kill 15 the gnome-panel process and everything works again, until I click on another icon on the TV screen's gnome panel. I guess this isn't a big critical problem, but it is unusual, and I would like to know the cause to better understand X/Gnome/Dual screen. Any clues? Thanks. [0] The task bar and menus wouldn't come up in consistent places, then somehow I deleted them, and I couldn't get everything back the way it was. Also, it got confused over the screen size, and the desktop (the whole desktop, including taskbar, etc) only covered part of the screen, with the rest covered by the grey-and-white checker pattern you see in GIMP when there's nothing there. Lastly, it absolutely refused to put even wallpaper and menus on the second monitor. The mouse cursor would appear on it, but that was it. [1] I used the think all the ripping on KDE for eliminating functionality and making the interface too simple and "Vista-like" was unfounded. Then I tried to work with it. I was severely disappointed.
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