*n*x

Define the main screen in Ubuntu Unity/Gnome3 dual screen setup 2011-05-13

I use a dual screen setup at home. On the left side I have a big lcd screen and on the right the fixed screen of the laptop (on a docking station). The big screen is my main screen, while the smaller screen is for things I like to keep open like mail or an irc session (ssh+screen+irssi).

In this new install, the unity global menu can be found on the smaller screen.This probably makes sense on a lot of setups, but I prefer this icon menu on my main screen as it feel more accessible (it’s physically closer) and it autohides anyway.

I did not find a graphical way to set this up, but editing the configuration file is very easy:

$ vi ~/.config/monitors.xml

or if you prefer a graphical editor:

Press Alt + F2 and type “gnome-text-editor ~/.config/monitors.xml”

Identify you main monitor (name, resolution, etc) and change “no” into:

<primary>yes</primary>

That’s it.