Linux Mint more than 4 monitors

Has anyone successfully run more than 4 monitors under linux mint? I am running mint 20 with 2 Nvidia GPU’s and when you plug in the 5th monitor xorg just starts crashing. I tried the MATE desktop and the crashing stopped but the 5th monitor would nver display anything even though it was fully recognized.

This will need a custom xorg.conf

I haven’t done this in forever, but the archwiki has some good data on how to accomplish this:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NVIDIA#Multiple_monitors

I know you’re on Mint, but the archwiki will apply for this as well.

The bit you’re looking for is this:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Card A"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        BusID           "PCI:1:00:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Card B"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        BusID           "PCI:2:00:0"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Right Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier      "Left Monitor"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Right Screen"
        Device          "Card A"
        Monitor         "Right Monitor"
        DefaultDepth    24
        Option          "SLI" "Mosaic"
        Option          "Stereo" "0"
        Option          "BaseMosaic" "True"
        Option          "MetaModes" "GPU-0.DFP-0: 1920x1200+4480+0, GPU-1.DFP-0:1920x1200+0+0"
        SubSection      "Display"
                        Depth           24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier      "Left Screen"
        Device          "Card B"
        Monitor         "Left Monitor"
        DefaultDepth    24
        Option          "SLI" "Mosaic"
        Option          "Stereo" "0"
        Option          "BaseMosaic" "True"
        Option          "MetaModes" "GPU-0.DFP-0: 1920x1200+4480+0, GPU-1.DFP-0:1920x1200+0+0"
        SubSection      "Display"
                        Depth           24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier      "Default"
        Screen 0        "Right Screen" 0 0
        Option          "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Of course, I believe you need two identical GPUs for this.

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Is there a way without Xinerama? I am running an Geforce 1070ti and I picked up a geforce gtx 1070 for the second card. I was reading that xorg only supports 4 displays per screen. Xorg is also somewhat orphaned.

Honestly, I’m not sure.

If xorg isn’t supporting more than 4 screens, you’re probably SOL with that display server.

You might have success with wayland on nouveau, considering the age of both gpus.

One other workaround maybe running passtrough VM with second GTX and Barrier.

Can Wayland be used with the closed source proprietary graphics drivers?

No, not at this time. fglrx, nvidia, psb, and other closed source drivers are developed externally to Xorg and externally to Ubuntu. As far as we know, work to update them to conform to the new KMS/GEM/etc. architecture is not planned (at least, not publicly) and would need to be done before they could be used under Wayland.

<sad_trombone>

Are the AMD drivers open source?

For their recent cards (gcn or newer), yes there is the open source AMDGPU driver.

Yes. but only amdgpu supported cards work with wayland IIRC.

nouveau != nvidia

nouveau is the open source variant of drivers for the nvidia GPUs. Last I checked, it works with wayland.

nvidia is the closed source shit-tastic implementation provided by nvidia.

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Yes, all cards are supported with either radeon or amdgpu.

Yes. Gnome supports the proprietary noVideo driver’s requirement for eglStreams. It is still a work in progress but has been functional since the beginning of the year. If you have bugs report upstream. Most of the quirks have actually come from the NV driver and not Wayland though.

Orphaned is not the correct word. It is on bug fix support only. Wayland (and Mir and Arcan) is the future and the xorg devs are actively working on that.

Nope. Xorg was not intended to run multiple monitors as one display. Xinerama implements hacked in xorg to make this work.

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