Open Elements

Yesterday I discovered phoronix.com, an online community dedicated to all technical things, and especially Linux.

I found the online forums extremely helpful.

www.phoronix.com/forums

I got dual monitors working on my Linux desktop. I ended up downloading the proprietary ATI driver then using the aticonfig command. This works on Fedora Core 8 with an ATI Radeon X700 graphics card and 2 monitors.

# Xorg configuration created by system-config-display

Section “ServerLayout”
	Identifier     “Default Layout”
	Screen      0  “aticonfig-Screen[0]” 0 0
	InputDevice    “Keyboard0″ “CoreKeyboard”
EndSection

Section “Files”
EndSection

Section “Module”
EndSection

Section “InputDevice”
	Identifier  “Keyboard0″
	Driver      “kbd”
	Option	    “XkbModel” “pc105″
	Option	    “XkbLayout” “us+inet”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
	Identifier   “aticonfig-Monitor[0]”
	Option	    “VendorName” “ATI Proprietary Driver”
	Option	    “ModelName” “Generic Autodetecting Monitor”
	Option	    “DPMS” “true”
EndSection

Section “Monitor”
	Identifier   “aticonfig-Monitor[1]”
	Option	    “VendorName” “ATI Proprietary Driver”
	Option	    “ModelName” “Generic Autodetecting Monitor”
	Option	    “DPMS” “true”
EndSection

Section “Device”
	Identifier  “Videocard0″
	Driver      “radeon”
EndSection

Section “Device”
	Identifier  “aticonfig-Device[0]”
	Driver      “fglrx”
	Option	    “DesktopSetup” “horizontal”
	Option	    “OverlayOnCRTC2″ “1″
	BusID       “PCI:1:0:0″
EndSection

Section “Device”
	Identifier  “aticonfig-Device[1]”
	Driver      “fglrx”
	BusID       “PCI:1:0:0″
	Screen      1
EndSection

Section “Screen”
	Identifier “Screen0″
	Device     “Videocard0″
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection “Display”
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
	Identifier “aticonfig-Screen[0]”
	Device     “aticonfig-Device[0]”
	Monitor    “aticonfig-Monitor[0]”
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection “Display”
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section “Screen”
	Identifier “aticonfig-Screen[1]”
	Device     “aticonfig-Device[1]”
	Monitor    “aticonfig-Monitor[1]”
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection “Display”
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

I’ve been using Linux for about a year now so I thought I’d write a quick blurb about my experience so far.

I decided to start with Novel’s openSUSE to run my own web server. The server setup was easy thanks to Yast. A few months later, I switched my desktop PC from a beta copy of Windows Vista to Fedora Core 6. This is now my main computer at home. A couple of months after that, I installed Ubuntu on my laptop.

Maintaining 3 different Linux systems in the course of one year has given me a pretty good understanding of a typical Linux system. I have a great deal of appreciation for all the people who contribute to these projects.

Will I continue to use Linux? yes, absolutely! and I plan give back to the community as I learn more.

See more progress on: be a Linux-guru

Mario Seijo
web developer