Programming Monitors. Setup and make HP, Dell, or other?

Question

I have been developing using a single 15.4" laptop for a while (duh!). Actually I am quite comfortable. I use compiz Grid, scale, window and some other nice add ons, to easily navigate.

I am now impressed by other dual monitor related questions on Stackoverflow and am buying more monitors.

Since I am not exactly used to these multiple monitor setups, I have a few (possibly basic) queries.

If I buy just one monitor, will I be able to set up it for a different resolution than on my laptop, on Ubuntu. What packages I need to install on ubuntu to better manage multiple monitors.

If I buy 2 22" monitors and intend to use the laptop screen as well, wont the third one appear like an odd man. Does it happen even if I have just 2 monitors.

I have used Dell and HP monitors in my earlier company and I feel HP is so much better. Obviously I would love to have a monitor that has little corners and nearly all visible screen, like iPhone. Is there a specific recommended model.

For a 3 monitor setup, is it absolutely necessary to buy an extra graphics card. Are there any other better solutions.

Answer 1

A CRT monitor can be set up with most any resolution you like, while a LCD monitor works best at it's max resolution.

You can mix monitors with different resolutions without problems in Windows, I can't imagine that it would be very hard in Linux either.

Answer 2

Be carefully dual head on Linux still sucks. The only time i got a triple screen configured with a GUI frontend and without .XConfig hacks was with Mandriva Spring 2007 never before and never after with any of Suse, Mandriva, CentOS.

It really sucks. It seems that configuration like dual head on one card and single head on another one is just not in the head of the programmers. You can enable all cards (maybe dual head is not always supported) or none.

Windows and MacOSX are the only systems which work fine. But MacOSX (and Hackintoshs) do not support dual head on all supported cards, for example my two 7300GTS cards can't run as dual head on MacOSX.

Answer 3

You can have two monitors at different resolution on Ubuntu just fine. I used to connect an Ubuntu laptop to a TV using HDMI and it worked fine. Something annoying is what monitor gets to be the main one, because you get all your desktop there. I thing generally the biggest one is the main one, which is not what I wanted for the TV, but probably what you want.

I'm not sure if it's possible to get a third monitor in any way on a laptop. I'd recommend you to go for the biggest monitor you can (budget and laptop capabilities, can you go to 30"?) and use the laptop as secondary screen space (useful for a browser, or docs, or im/tweeter/mails, etc.