Confused! What's the difference between dualhead and multiple adapters? Options diff?

[Vantskruv]

Hi!
I've some questions about the settings in the aticonfig tool. I'm using the X1950XTX card which has 2 outputs. The first question is, if I want to have these 2 outputs active for 2 screens, is this called dual-head or is it called multiple adapters?


My second question is, if I want my 2 screens to be cloned, should I use the option --dtop? Though, at the bottom of the description, it tells me this is not valid in dual-head? Is this only possible for multiple adapters?

  --dtop, --desktop-setup=STRING
        Change the desktop setup for multiple display adapters.
        STRING can be one of:
            single              1 screen, second dark
            mirror              2 screens - same content, identical
                                refresh rate/resolution
                                Note: This option is NOT supported with Avivo
            clone               2 screens - same content, allows for
                                different refresh rates/resolutions
            horizontal          2 screens - one framebuffer,
                                screen 1 right of screen 0
            horizontal,reverse  2 screens - one framebuffer,
                                screen 1 left of screen 0
            vertical            2 screens - one framebuffer,
                                screen 1 above of screen 0
            vertical,reverse    2 screens - one framebuffer,
                                screen 1 below of screen 0
        Note:  This option is not valid if '--initial=dual-head' is specified.

Why are there 2 options for changing the screen resolution? Which one should I use for dual-head respectively multiple adapters?

  --resolution=Screen#,W1xH1,W2xH2,W3xH3,...
        Set the modes for the specified screen.  You may specify several
        resolutions separated by commas.
        Screens start at 0.  You can use 1 for dual-head

  --mode2=W1xH1,W2XH2,W3xH3,...
        Change the modes for the second display.  You may specify several
        resolutions separated by commas.  Only valid for clone and big desktop
        settings.

So is this only do dual-head? What about multiple adapters?

  --screen-layout={left|right|above|below}
        Set the secondary screen position for dual head.

So the last question, what's this for? I want to look at movies on my projector, should I use this option?

  --ovon, --overlay-on={0|1}
        Choose which head the hardware overlay should be visible on.  The
        hardware overlay can be used for either OpenGL, video or

Many questions from a confused fellow!
(I miss a good guide and description of the aticonfig settings, I'm almost refusing to edit the xorg.conf manually, because many tips on internet are some times outdated, and also some options may change for each driver update).

[Vantskruv]

Anyway, I noticed without setting any special options from aticonfig, connecting a second monitor worked! This has not happened before, I guess it is the new updated drivers and CCC. Actually I don't know what version of the drivers I've (8.10?) (though it is shown I'm using the driver version 8.543, but that's not the official naming system I guess). Anyway, the drivers I've is the official drivers from the Ubuntu repositories.

I wan't to add that when connecting another screen while the computer is on, the screen gets very corrupted. But a tempory solution is to change the resolution in CCC, and then change it back.

I don't dare to install any new ATI drivers. The installation is actually to complicated for normal people (though I've quite good experience installing it). But it seems installing new offical ATI drivers doesn't work well at all. Even though ATI releases new drivers every month, this doesn't mean that new drivers are getting better and improving the system. Not until ATI, or Ubuntu/Debian team, can make new drivers easy to install without problems on the system without any problems. For normal people using Ubuntu, black screens and problems when starting the computer up with new drivers (trying to get rid of earlier bugs in drivers), will scare them of. Linux is not user-friendly. For me, I've to wait every 6 months for each new distribution to get new improved drivers (hopefully getting rid of earlier bugs). I'm refusing to install new drivers until system-repsonibles can make it easy for normal people to install new drivers. I.e. update the repositories every month for the fglrx-drivers (after testing of course). Or ATI takes the responsibility of the fglrx-repositories,

Sorry for long text, I just need to breath my dissatisfaction of the ATI driver support.

Edit: Also I want to add. For normal users installing the ATI drivers. They should not need to access the terminal and use the aticonfig to setup the options. This should either be set automaticly or via a nice GUI window within install (should also be accessible easy if the user want to make another changes later).