[ale] Multi-Monitor Behavior

[Jim Kinney]

Interesting.
I have a gnome laptop with 2 external monitors. They are arranged as a single large monitor so my laptop is the center of the 3.

If the entire pile goes to sleep, it all returns to normal when I wake it up. If I hibernate, unplug all external screens and wake it up, all apps are local on laptop as I expect. I can replug externals and move apps back and it remembers on next wake up.

Sometimes the apps will start up on the correct screen after reboot if all screens are live when gnome starts. 

Both monitors and laptop are Dell. The monitors are same size and resolution but different models.

On December 19, 2020 1:51:34 PM EST, David Jackson via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>Progress report:
>
>https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/5487
>
>It looks like this behavior (moving windows to a single monitor after
>screen lock and monitors awakening from sleep mode) is an older problem
>with gnome.  Like four years old!  It only appears with multi-monitor
>setups, apparently.  The only partial solution I've found is to not
>hibernate the monitors.  Apparently the problem derives from one
>monitor
>being slower to wake up than the other.  And apparently if I were to
>use a
>non-gnome window manager, the problem would go away.
>
>BTW, I'm using Cinnamon on Arch.  I have a laptop running Mint 20.0
>with an
>external display that doesn't seem to have this problem.  I'm typing
>this
>from my latest box running Arch and the latest Cinnamon version, which
>does
>have this problem.  All of my other Cinnamon desktops use a single
>monitor,
>so no joy there.
>
>Does anyone here have any experience with this problem?
>
>On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 5:56 PM David Jackson <deepbsd.ale at gmail.com>
>wrote:
>
>> Hey all,
>>
>> I just built a Black Friday box and installed Arch (less than 10 min
>with
>> my spanking Farchi script!), but now I have a curious behavior that I
>think
>> has to do with a power savings setting I'm not aware of.
>>
>> I'm using Cinnamon with LightDM.  When I come back to my two displays
>> (primary HDMI and secondary DP), all apps that are open wind up on
>the
>> primary display only.  Everything that had been on the slave display
>gets
>> moved to the primary.  I've been using Cinnamon/LightDM for a long
>time,
>> and I've never seen this behavior before.
>>
>> My theory is that the secondary display is trying to power off, but
>the
>> primary doesn't power off, and the WM moves all apps to the only
>monitor it
>> sees still "awake."
>>
>> The behavior I want and had with the previous box (previous to the
>Black
>> Friday build) is Both monitors hibernate and the apps stay where they
>> were.  As it appears now, I cannot catch either monitor hibernating. 
>The
>> machine itself is NOT suspending or hibernating.  I don't have the
>ACPI
>> settings set to hibernate the computer.  I just want the monitors to
>> hibernate.  That's what I'm going for.  (The new mobo is a Gigabyte
>Z390M
>> BTW.)
>>
>> Any ideas about what's going on?  All help welcomed in thinking
>through
>> this.  TIA!
>>
>> Dave
>>

-- 
Computers amplify human error
Super computers are really cool
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