usb outboard video adapters with linux?

[AB2T]

Right now I'm using a laptop with a broken screen as my primary computer. The vga port is already being used with one monitor. I have an outboard usb to dvi adapter that I'd like to use with another monitor. I don't care that the dongle only has 16 mb video ram -- the other screen will not be used for video. The adapter can do 1280x1024 full color, even if it's a bit poky from what I've heard.

Anyway, it seems that the only way to get this working is to download kernel source code, write the adaptor into the usb addresses, recompile the kernel, and make an xorg file (xorg really shouldn't be necessary with linux 3.0+). I really, really don't want to compile a kernel and futz with xorg. Any other suggestions?

73, Jordan

[N0NB]

I didn't have to do anything but write a custom xorg.conf with screen0 and screen1 sections when I used a USB-VGA dongle about 18 months ago. You'll also need a desktop environment that can handle independent screens and the only one I found that can do that well is XCFE. I'll have to look and see if I still have that xorg.conf file laying around.

Nope, no longer around.

[AB2T]

I didn't have to do anything but write a custom xorg.conf with screen0 and screen1 sections when I used a USB-VGA dongle about 18 months ago. You'll also need a desktop environment that can handle independent screens and the only one I found that can do that well is XCFE. I'll have to look and see if I still have that xorg.conf file laying around.

Nope, no longer around.

Okay, xorg it is. I use LXDE. It'll handle dual screen with a dual-head pci video card. However, LXDE can't create two separate but linked desktops. One desktop spreads across two monitors. Not ideal, but I'd rather run openbox (which LXDE is built on) because of its simplicity.

I'll try my hand at writing up an xorg file, and then see what happens. I haven't come across a template xorg.conf file, but surely someone else out there has got a dongle to work with LXDE.

73, Jordan