+++ This bug was initially created as a clone of Bug #8115 +++ Right now it seems, that the primary display (the one which has the panel in auto mode, which gets notification, which is monitor 1 in the desktop settings dialog and so on) is always the one which defines the 0xX-border of the virtual screen in a multimonitor setup. The --primary/--noprimary option of xrandr isn't honored.
Copied from bug # 8115: Joost Van Durme 2012-01-10 16:46:51 CET The problem is that you cannot specify the primary display in a dual head setup. Normally you would use the xrandr command: xrandr --output CRT1 --primary to set the external screen as primary, so it gets the XFCE panel. And you use xrandr --output CRT1 --right-of LVDS to position the external monitor to match your physical setup. The problem is that the panel only wants to be on the display that is on the left as defined by xrandr. In my case the laptop display (LVDS). The --primary option does work in other desktop environments such as gnome2.3..
So basically, the --primary flag of xrandr is completely ignored in xfce.
Xfce does not call xrandr CLI. It uses directly the API functions of libxrandr. That means, additional logic that is in xrandr executable should be reimplemented in Xfce code. --primary Set the output as primary. It will be sorted first in Xinerama and RANDR geometry requests.
There's already code in xfce4-display-settings to support that feature. It should set an output as primary if the property /Default/<screen id>/Primary is true (e.g. /Default/LVDS1/Primary). And if you set an output as primary using xrandr and open xfce4-display-settings later, it shouldn't override the property.
Hi Lionel, forgive me, I'm just a user... where can I change that property? Or can't I changed that as a user? Joost
Just noticed I can change that in the Settings Editor, but the primary screen does not change to my external monitor after restart.
furthermore requesting a session restart is not really an option, especially for laptop users who need to move without downtime.
*** Bug 8115 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Setting a primary monitor is quite important. Lacking this feature can make some setups almsot unusable.
Bug still present in XFCE 4.10. Any changes in newer versions? I have a Hi-PPI laptop which sits on the right side of the my LCD; enabling the external output means my primary screen will jump to the low-res LCD; hardly usable as primary screen with everything so scaled up (so I basically intend to use it as a secondary display for video playback or terminal windows only, but that's a different issue). In my use case I can just say "OK, it is on the right side" (since I use it so sparsely I can get used to the crazy mouse transitions), but I can see other people would have much more troubles caused by this bug. Also, Bug 8936 seems to be duplicate of this one. And I don't think the "importance" of this bug should be only "medium enhancement"; enhacement should enhance something already working. For many of us, dual screen support in XFCE is _not_ working. Thanks, Martin
This is a bug, not an enhancement, and it is my top-most difficulty with XFCE. I have a setup in my office where my primary monitor is in front of me, and the secondary laptop is to the left. XFCE will not make the monitor in front of me primary. There are some small workarounds -- I can put panels on the "primary" monitor, but windows and notifications still go to the wrong monitor.
I understand that not everyone is running nvidia hardware.. but if you are, my primary display is set from within nvidia-settings and the option is saved in my xorg.conf. In my 3 monitor setup I have that set to the middle monitor. It does affect where notifications are displayed. If set to the left or right monitor they will display there even if the panel is on the middle monitor. Windows however seem to rely on the program remembering where it was when shutdown. Some are programed to remember.. many are not it seems.
Created attachment 5672 A screenshot of the relevant settings (In reply to Lionel Le Folgoc from comment #4) > There's already code in xfce4-display-settings to support that feature. It > should set an output as primary if the property /Default/<screen id>/Primary > is true (e.g. /Default/LVDS1/Primary). And if you set an output as primary > using xrandr and open xfce4-display-settings later, it shouldn't override > the property. Confirmed that this does *not* work. LXDE does not respect xrandr --primary, and it doesn't even respect its own settings as to which monitor is the primary one. I have my primary monitor (DVI-0) physically below and to the right of my secondary monitor (VGA-0). Even with the attached XFCE display settings, things like notifications, the default mouse location when I log in, the desktop icon locations, will all be on the upper-right monitor (which I do not want.) Furthermore, Hangouts windows will only "pin" to the bottom of the primary monitor. Basically, not being able to set the primary monitor causes all sorts of little things across various programs to mess up. I've already tried running xrandr --output DVI-0 --preferred --primary to see if it would do any good, but it didn't. Please fix this bug. This is not a requested enhancement. This is a significant problem.
Pushed the fix to git master just now: http://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-settings/commit/?id=d9158dc3f7a51c61b6d25acdb389ed8419c975c6 Note that it depends on the various clients (panels, daemons) to respect the RandR primary property. For instance xfce4-panel doesn't take it into account yet (which was one reason for this feature not being pushed in xfce4-settings). However, this will work fine with clients that already support the primary property (e.g. plank and other docks).
I'm running XFCE 4.12, with slackware 14.2. This bug is still ON.
This bug still affects me in Mint x64 18.1...
Why does this bug show as "fixed"? I have the exact same problem, fairly fresh Xubuntu 16.04 install with XFCE 4.12. Connecting a monitor only gives me the choice to extend the desktop to the right of my laptop, which makes no sense when the newly connected display is located physically to the left of the laptop. This but clearly should be reopened.
I posted on the xfce forums as well, where ToZ pointed out that the fix is applied to the source and is not available in the 4.12 release. I quote him: "Keep in mind that the current xfce4-panel git code is different from the 4.12 code in that it has been migrated to GTK3 and is for testing purposes only. That being said, it appears pretty stable (but I haven't tested all of the functionality)."
Reopening due to recent complains.
(In reply to Raphael Groner from comment #19) > Reopening due to recent complains. ? It is fixed. It's just not released as of 4.12.
(In reply to haarp from comment #20) > (In reply to Raphael Groner from comment #19) > > Reopening due to recent complains. > > ? > > It is fixed. It's just not released as of 4.12. Then please fix in 4.12 branch, too.
(In reply to haarp from comment #20) > (In reply to Raphael Groner from comment #19) > > Reopening due to recent complains. > > ? > > It is fixed. It's just not released as of 4.12. Given the target milestone 4.6 shown above, it was easy to think, that this bug may have been _believed_ fixed, as of 4.6. Which it isn't, obviously, if users still see it in 4.12. If there is a fix for the next release, fine. Better if it is pushed out sooner. When I started having this problem, I could see it had been disturbing people for years.
The feature has been released as part of 4.12.0 - you can easily spot the two related commits here in the history: https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-settings/log/?h=xfce4-settings-4.12.0 Note that the primary checkbox is hidden when there is only one monitor connected. As I don't have my external monitor with me and can't take a screenshot you will have to trust this external source (actually done as part of a 4.12 review at the time when it was released) http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nv1RgjxgjWg/VPSZyi-mokI/AAAAAAAAVsk/50VMXrX37Sg/s1600/xfce412-display-multimonitor.png Other than that I cannot think of any reason why that feature wouldn't be there for you unless your distribution decided to patch it out.
I am using XFCE 4.12.0 (Gentoo -r2) and this bug still affects me. The display is set as Primary in XFCE's settings, yet even after logging out/in, xrandr still displays merely "DVI-0 connected 1440x900+1280+0…"
(In reply to Simon Steinbeiss from comment #23) > http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nv1RgjxgjWg/VPSZyi-mokI/AAAAAAAAVsk/50VMXrX37Sg/ > s1600/xfce412-display-multimonitor.png Yes, I suppose I can make a similar screen shot. This does not change the fact, that if I drag the Samsung rectangle to the left of the Laptop, all windows and panels jump onto the Samsung. I expect these to remain on the primary screen. "Extend" doesn't mean "make things jump around". Also, when connecting the Samsung display, I can click a "fast and simple" configuration that puts the Samsung on the right (or choose not to use it, or choose mirroring, or "manual" config). Why isn't there a similar shortcut to put it on the left? This seems biased. For more precise placing (mainly for relative height), dragging around rectangles is good, but if I could make a suggestion, make the relative scaling of the rectangles fixed, and put the primary display rectangle at the center, with enough space that the secondary display can be dragged around it. As it is, it seems the rectangles randomly change size (because the rectangles are displayed wider when one is above the other), which is completely strange, confusing, annoying, and makes precise dragging hard. As I said, I use Xubuntu 16.04(.02 to be exact), and xfce4-about says 4.12. I suppose that is the same as 4.12.0, which you say fixes the problem. So it seems that we may be in disagreement as to what the actual problem is?
@Lasse: As I indicated in my original comment, the fact that the panel and xfdesktop don't support the Primary feature is annoying, but that's not the display setting's job (so your bug would simply go into another component). The good news for the panel is that I have implemented that support already and Git master has it. I have also backported it to 4.12, but so far nobody from the respective issue has reported any test results. (See https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9338) All your other complaints should go as feature requests or bugreports into separate issues. @James: Not sure what xrandr's output should be, the primary feature does work though (it works with the panel from Git master - to become 4.13, and other applications like plank).
Simon, that sounds terrific, thank you. As for where the bug goes, I can only say that as a user it is often hard to tell, but when the problem manifests itself, I am looking at display settings, so that would seem a natural place to start in any case for a user, even if it is obvious to a developer that the problem root cause is elsewhere. You shouldn't expect users to know this.
I'm on Linux Mint 18.1 Xfce, and I have this bug too. It seems the "primary" display is how OP describes it.
Just registered to confirm this bug is still hitting me. my version is 4.12: xfce4-panel 4.12.0-3ubuntu2 and I can see the Primary option: https://i.imgur.com/zzrE9V4.png but this option is just ignored. I move my laptop a lot between home and workplaces and I just want my laptop display to remain the primary no matter what I plug into vga/hdmi output. from a user's perspective, is hard to understand why this behaviour isn't the default one.
@mussol, @eks eph: Please read the bugreport carefully. The primary option works as expected in the component this bugreport concerns (the display dialog), as it sets the hint correctly. The fact that the panel and xfdesktop didn't react on this hint is true and known. For the panel I have fixed this both in the 4.13.0 release (a development release and the Gtk+3 port) and I have also pushed a patch into the 4.12 branch of the panel, so I will release 4.12.2 as soon as enough translations for the new "Primary" string have flown in. https://git.xfce.org/xfce/xfce4-panel/log/?h=xfce-4.12
this bug still exists, it's literally ignored. how is that possible after all that time?
I agree with ebfe. This should really be addressed, also because xrandr workarounds create other problems e.g. with desktop and some window positioning.
I know the report is long and there are a lot of misleading comments. However, the feature has long been introduced to the settings dialog. Applications (even if they're Xfce core components) not yet honoring this setting is not the subject of *this* report. As an example, here is the issue that tracks the lack of support for the primary option in Xfdesktop (which takes care of rendering your wallpaper and desktop icons): https://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10688 Again, I'm closing this issue. Feel free to carefully read my comments above if this (final) comment wasn't clear enough.