4 Monitors

Full Size Image

Setup: 17" 1280x1024 (2 on far left and right),  22" 1680x1050 (vertical), 24" 1920x1080 (center).

The vertical monitor is on a hand-build stand made of 3/4" inch plywood (hand sawn - no power tools). Having a vertical monitor is amazing, especially for development. The difference it makes viewing code is phenomenal as it allows me to view 90 lines of code at once instead of 55.

The Struggle
Setting these monitors up was extremely difficult. But hopefully my endeavors can aid the rest of you, should you choose to increase your productivity by adding monitors.

Step 1. Don't buy an AMD graphics card. The cards are wonderful, the drivers are unbearable.
Step 2. Ok, so you bought an AMD card by accident, now what? The next step is to install the proprietary drivers. Twice. I first try to use 11.8 catalyst drivers, and then when they don't work I install the latest version.
Step 3. Now, you may notice some weird overlap between screens (only a few pixels), this can be fixed by editing your Xorg.conf file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf). Scroll down till you see "Section "Screen"", then change the "Virtual desktop" size and increase it as large as you need to.

Finally the tool that makes things work even when you're down, arandr (an XRandR GUI).

Well, that's about it, or at least the key points that helped me set up my multi monitors.
Note: Have another computer on hand just in case things go awry.

Debian

Debian is my operating system of choice at the moment for a desktop enviroment. It combines the out-of-the-box functionality of Ubuntu but without all of the clutter. The things I like about Debian that set it apart from the rest is the default Gnome 2 desktop environment (which really deserves its own post) as well as Apt (yes, apt). Now I'm sure the gurus started shaking their heads when I said Apt, but don't judge yet. Apt is easy to use, widely supported, and stable. The same is true for others like Pacman and Yum, and nothing is wrong with using those. Of course I still compile many of my tools from source, but Apt is just a way to get things done fast.

Debian Squeeze however may not be the optimal choice if you are installing on a laptop/netbook. If you are looking for a beautiful lightweight environment without lots of clutter, then I suggest Crunchbang Linux.

Crunchbang just looks beautiful. With its OpenBox window manager, it just works. It's also super fast, so for those under powered netbooks its perfect for increasing runtimes. Crunchbang, unlike pure Debian does take some knowing however. For beginners I suggest sticking with pure Debian (or Ubuntu, just don't get stuck on it) to begin with, and then moving on to try out other distros like crunchbang.

Well that's my bit, what about you? What's your distro of choice and why?