Having cake and also eating it: Compiz and dual-head on an ATI HD 2600

dual head photo

Only a day after complaining about my ATI card running under Ubuntu, I seem to have a solved a lot of the issues. Slightly embarrassing. To recap - my system is set up like this:

HP 8510p laptop with an ATI HD 2600 mobility card running Ubuntu 8.04 with a 1680×1050 screen, often connected to an external monitor (same resolution).

My ideal setup would be like this:

  • ‘Big desktop’ mode when plugged into an external monitor, allowing windows to be dragged between screens.
  • When the monitor is unplugged, to continue working on the laptop screen, without restarting Xorg.
  • Compiz-fusion providing ‘expose’ functionality amongst other things.
  • Generally not having crashes would be nice.

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