dual monitors

[tmetro-blu-5a1Jt6qxUNc at public.gmane.org (Tom Metro)]

This weekend I attached a 2nd monitor to my laptop and designated it the
"primary display" in the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" applet. I have it
running in "TwinView" mode where the two monitors share a contiguous
desktop.

I've ran across plenty of mentions of issues with multiple monitors in
X, and sure enough it didn't take long to spot them. I could see the
occasional, obscure app. not handling it well (like DockBarX, or Bless
Hex editor, both of which have problems) but I'm seeing issues with some
main stream apps like OpenOffice. OOo puts up its splash screen centered
across both displays. Then opens its window on on the laptop's screen,
rather than the primary display. Even after manually moving the window
to the correct display, every time it opens a dialog it goes back to the
laptop's display.

It probably doesn't help that the primary display ended up being to the
right of the laptop. I have a feeling poorly coded defaults would tend
to work better if things were the other way around, but this ordering
fits the physical setup better.

So I'm wondering, is there an X configuration (for GNOME 2.28.1
w/nvidia-glx-185) that is the "path of least resistance" for getting
dual monitors to work with the fewest problems?

I'm hoping some of these issues will go away with the upgrade from
Ubuntu 9.10 to 10.10, but it's not like dual-monitor setups are anything
new, so I don't have high expectations. I guess I'll be filing a lot of
bug reports...

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
Venture Logic, Newton, MA, USA
"Enterprise solutions through open source."
Professional Profile: http://tmetro.venturelogic.com/