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I am running the Qubes 3.2 (https://qubes-os.org) operating system with the awesome window manager installed and recently purchased an ultrawide 49" screen. I wish to partition my one physical monitor into 2 smaller monitors on the edges and one larger in the center to accommodate my particular needs.
AwesomeWM apparently have support for creating these fake screens (https://awesomewm.org/doc/api/classes/screen.html#screen:fake_add), but only from version 4. Qubes only supports awesome 3.5.9, which means I cannot use this API.
My next option was to try fakeXrandR (https://github.com/phillipberndt/fakexrandr) which may alleviate my problems, but upon reading the description over there it seems that I should be able to do this without fakexrandr
Also note: With xrandr 1.5, this library shouldn't be needed anymore for most users. xrandr has an abstraction for "monitors" now which should work out of the box, at least with applications written using one of the big GUI frameworks.
Running xrandr -v in a terminal reveals
xrandr program version 1.4.3
Server reports RandR version 1.5
so I assume I should be able to do it, given the information from the description is correct.
I am not sure how to proceed to configure my xorg.conf to make this happen though. I have searched a lot, but couldn't find any information on this, which is why I am asking here.
user3207230
Posted 2018-11-02T15:06:53.237
Reputation: 111
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Found this, apparently it's not obvious. In what way do you want to access your virtual smaller monitors? As separate screens :0.0, :0.1 and :0.2? Or scrollable views into a single big framebuffer on a single screen :0.0?
– dirkt – 2018-11-02T17:58:36.160Nice find! Yeah, ideally I would like to access them as separate screens, as I would like to have three different workspaces in the awesome window manager. Seems like some of the commands they mention, like 'xrandr --listmonitors' does not work for me. – user3207230 – 2018-11-02T18:33:01.377
I meant screens as in "X screens", not as in "WM workspaces". These are very different concepts, for example you'd need a different DISPLAY, and you won't be able to move an application to a different X screen. – dirkt – 2018-11-03T08:32:02.620
If you mean "WM workspaces",
xrandrorxorg.confis the wrong way in the first place: WM workspaces just manipulate the window position/visibility, so if you want "multiple WM workspaces on one display", the only way is to use a WM that offers these. – dirkt – 2018-11-03T08:33:38.420@dirkt But awesome will handle different physical monitors by associating a new workspace with each screen. It is possible to handle in version of awesome greater than 4, but unfortunately I am stuck with 3.5.9. – user3207230 – 2018-11-05T06:52:51.480
I'll take this as a "yes, I want different VM workspaces on a single screen". I assume that means different physical monitors with Xinerama enabled? I still don't see a way to do that with xrandr (though that doesn't mean it's not possible in some way I don't see). In your place, the first thing I'd have done is to get the source code for awesome version 4, and compile it myself. (But I'm used to compiling stuff myself). – dirkt – 2018-11-05T06:56:56.647
Yeah, I am going to try compiling awesome 4.2, however the OS I use (Qubes) does not seem compatible with that since it needs a bunch of patches for the particular version it uses now. I will take on the challenge though and try to make it happen, but still wanted to see if I could set up my workstation to maximize my productivity. – user3207230 – 2018-11-05T08:12:12.123