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I got two screens(extended desktop) and the second is widescreen standing on its side, so i told ubuntu that its vertical, it works fine, but the wallpaper area of the first horizontal smaller one, goes all the way down to the size of the vertical one. The problem is the icons on my desktop get in the hidden area, when they are created and i have to be constantly moving them to see them.

Oddly enough this does not happen in xfce only in the gnome desktop.

I thought it was nautilus fault so i tried pcmanfm to render my desktop/wallpaper, same issue. It's a gnome thing.

How can i make it so the geometry is not a big square but 2 rectangles on my desktop

The left part is the small widescreen monitor, the right is the widescreen vertically placed. And i can move my mouse on the left way below the visible part, and the desktop icons are going down there too i have to reposition them manually.

.Desktop area is a square not a polygon,

xrandr --current outputs this:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 2180 x 1440, maximum 2806 x 2806
LVDS connected 1280x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 353mm x 199mm
   1280x768       60.0*+
   1366x768       60.0 +
   1360x768       60.0  
   1280x720       60.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   1024x600       60.0  
   800x600        60.0  
   800x480        60.0  
   640x480        60.0  
DFP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
CRT1 connected 900x1440+1280+0 right (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 410mm x 257mm
   1440x900       59.9*+
   1280x1024      75.0     60.0  
   1280x960       60.0  
   1280x800       60.0  
   1152x864       75.0     59.9  
   1280x768       60.0  
   1280x720       60.0  
   1024x768       75.0     70.1     60.0  
   1024x600       75.0     70.1     60.0  
   800x600        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   800x480        72.2     75.0     60.3     56.2  
   640x480        75.0     72.8     67.0     59.9

I' pretty sure DFP1 is my HDMI output, i', not using that one.

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A screenshot would help here tremendously. –  Capt.Nemo Sep 8 '11 at 1:53
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2 Answers

Can you configure using xrandr? I'm not sure how you should configure it - as display names can vary, but i think this might work:

xrandr --output VGA 900x1440 --right-of --output LVDS 1280x800

you might want to look into how xrandr's documentation. I've found great success with that whenever I've worked with multiple monitors. It's also comparatively easy to set one monitor up in portrait mode.

AFAIK, even gnome-display-properties and XFCE use xrandr to configure the monitor, and having more fine grained controls might be useful.

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This works, but its the same problem, the desktop size of the LVDS is as tall as the CRT1 so, the icons keep going down and i can move my mouse past the bottom of the screen. In the screenshot i can move my mouse to the black area but that are is not physically visible, unless of course i take a screenshot :p I was reading the man page for xrandr but i'm not sure where to start, i updated the answer with the output of xrandr --current. –  Guillermo Siliceo Trueba Sep 10 '11 at 17:41
typo: [..]"i can move my mouse to the black area but that area*"[..] –  Guillermo Siliceo Trueba Sep 10 '11 at 17:47
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The mouse moving into those dead areas is a known X bug however there is a workaround using XCreateMouseVoid that I have detailed in this question:

There are two bug reports for Desktop icons disappearing into the dead area that I covered in an ubuntu forum post a while ago:

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Awww, thats sad i was hoping there would be a fix for this. OK thanks. –  Guillermo Siliceo Trueba Sep 10 '11 at 19:59
This explains the cursor going to a dead area, but still the icons don't disappear on xfce they are all above the taskbar panel, this still is an issue with gnome, any ideas on that? –  Guillermo Siliceo Trueba Sep 10 '11 at 20:03
The dekstop icon placement is controlled by Nautilus therefore the issue would not occur with XFCE. All those bugs are still open so it is still an issue. –  Cas Sep 10 '11 at 20:29
I'm afraid is not a Nautilus exclusive issue, i tried(as i said on my question) drawing the desktop with pcmanfm and its the same problem. Maybe both programs access some gnome api that the one thats broken. –  Guillermo Siliceo Trueba Sep 10 '11 at 20:39
Actually i shouldnt the bug is Xorg's and a fix has being applied as show on the last comments here bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg-server/+bug/389519 –  Guillermo Siliceo Trueba Sep 10 '11 at 21:03
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