Dual screen not mirrored?

[EricaLina]

Does anyone have any clues to give as to setting up dual screen on the Nanopi m6?

 

I searched the forum and found nothing. I don't know why I can never easily find

Anything here. The forum shows one post for the Nanopi m6 and I know that can't be right.

 

The Nanopi mirrors by default, and that is just not going cut it.  

 

Currently installing X on a minimal install.

But that's the next thing. Get a reasonablf sized terminal up.

[Igor]

1 hour ago, EricaLina said:

Does anyone have any clues to give as to setting up dual screen on the Nanopi m6?

What do you mean by that? You mean LCD screen on the device and HDMI monitor. This should probably work OOB on vendor 6.1.y kernel. It should also work with mainline, but I haven't tested that and I am not sure that this is included in latest stable build as it was added not long ago. Try build from sources, use EDGE kernel perhaps.

 

1 hour ago, EricaLina said:

I searched the forum and found nothing.

 

It is very specific case - probably nobody asked for that before. At least I don't recall.

 

1 hour ago, EricaLina said:

The forum shows one post for the Nanopi m6 and I know that can't be right.

 

Core features are based on SoC, so when you are looking for clues, look wider - Orange 5 *, Khadas Edge 2, Bananapi M7, ... all that carries RK3588 SoC.

 

1 hour ago, EricaLina said:

Currently installing X on a minimal install.

Best is to start with recommended Gnome image. That is most polished.

[EricaLina]

This is on minimal. So no xorg or Wayland. But I use xorg normally.

 

I generally start with minimal and work up.

I despise both Ubuntu and gnome.

You won't find those on any computer I own. I compromise with xfce for the little time I might use it before I have everything set up.

 

I've just reversed direction and installed debian xfce stable. Mostly to avoid the hassle of replacing net plan with network manager.  A PIA.  

 

I can uninstall all the stuff I don't like that comes with the desktop version. Probably easier.

 

With xfce there are two screens, but the one on the built in screen seems to be double the size it should be.  I can only see half the dog.  

 

I can live with that for now. At least it uses the Fullscreen of the HDMI.

[specs]

I experienced the same you did, but with an M2 (and some custom build kernel).

The "quick" solutions:

- switch to one of the main windowmanagers, say Gnome or Plasma (perhaps the Gnome or QT-tools works better, "not-tested!")

- switch to Wayland (while the window-setup-tool did not work in lxqt/x11 it worked from the start with lxqt/wayland)

The third option would be to re-implement the windows-setup-tools to fit your hardware, but I guess that won't be quick.

 

The problem as I see it: X11 is getting on in years and while tools exist to solve the problem, the support is lacking. Especially when running a minimal X11-windowmanager with a "non-standard GPU", the accompanying tools are getting more and more obsolete.

 

Mali support is "recent" (here I count both G52 Panfrost from 2020 and G610 Panthor support from 2023). From Panfrost on the drivers seem to have been developed with Wayland in mind, X11 being included only for compatibility. You might find X11 to be still more stable right now, for performance and functionality Wayland is a already step forward. I expect X11 to fall behind more and more on stability as well.

 

For the RK3588 I found redshift and dual screen failing to work as intended. Redshift does nothing where it should change colors. I could not switch dual screens from mirroring to extended screens in X11, while with Wayland it works from the start with an extended screen. That leaves 2 options: the display-setting-tools are lacking or the implementation is of mesa/panthor/X11 is incomplete.

 

So the question is what do you think the way to go for the user interface is: Wayland or X11?

 

PS As for the M2 with dualscreen over DP1.2-altmode: support is there for 6.17 and a lot of patches. If you wait for 6.18 most important patches should be mainlined (the DTS-patches being the exception). At least, I think I'll skip 6.17 in favour of 6.18-rc1.

Edited October 10 by specs

[EricaLina]

Well, I do think X11 is going to fall behind at some point if it continues to lack support of new things.  I don't know the status for gaming on Wayland. I use lutris and wine to play WoW. Which doesn't yet work on these machines. Perhaps with 6.16.

 

I'm an Xmonad user and I wouldn't touch gnome or kde with a ten foot pole. 

I'll use fvwm2 in a pinch.

 

So far there isn't a "wm" on Wayland that compares to Xmonad, and I wouldn't use hypr land or any thing related to it for politics. Nasty people.

 

Sway is the most promising at the moment, but it is too close to i3 which is too limited.

 

There is no way Xmonad will become a compositor. So something has to happen.

 

Not using 2 screens might be the easiest.

I don't need two. But the Nanopi m6 has two. I can just get another without a screen and use this one as a server.

 

Just living in the increasingly limited realm of X11 seems to be the thing to do unless I want to write a compositor.

 

I've thought about adding compositing abilities to emacs. Someone has done a bit of that. Might be politically difficult to get it in. It would also mean writing a new Exwm.

 

I'll just hang on to X because Wayland still doesn't meet my needs, and it has nothing capable of replacing what I have on X.

[specs]

When I switched to trixie lxde was not yet available, therefore I have been working with lxqt (x11) for almost a year now. With your message I realised there is lxde for trixie.

 

Since the mirroring problem I found myself looking for a wayland "windowmanager" a few weeks ago. Installing labwc and the sid-package "lxqt-wayland-session" you can use lxqt with wayland. I have been using lxqt/wayland for a few days now. Some functions are missing (I do miss the oxygen mouse cursors in wayland). Can't say much about stability yet. So YMMV.

 

If you lookup lxqt/wayland on github you'll find it is a recent development, somewhere between alpha and beta stage.

 

However if your strict on kde, lxqt might not be for you since it is qt-based (althought the looks of lxde are mostly similar).

Edited October 11 by specs

[EricaLina]

I simply don't need or want a desktop or anything with icons.

I do use a few things on occasion that have toolbars like libre office or krita, gimp, ink scape, and kicad. But otherwise I have no use for all that mess of desktop window management and mousing.

 

Xfce is ok for a half day of installing stuff. But otherwise I have no use for that stuff.