By default the Cinnamon/Gnome/Mate desktop environment loads its own display
configuration from the file ~/.config/monitors.xml instead of using the
settings defined in /etc/X11/xorg.conf. This can be a little bit annoying if
you are using the nvidia-settings program to configure your displays (which
will use xorg.conf), since anything entered there will be overridden by
monitors.xml every reboot.
By doing the following changes we will disable the "Display Manager" in
Cinnamon/Gnome/Mate, and make the system default back to using the xorg.conf
settings again.
ℹ️ Before you begin to mess around with your system, please make a backup of your files!
⚠️ Read this section if you are adding/removing monitors frequently.
The offending program is the "xrandr" plugin for the
<cinnamon/gnome/mate>-settings-daemon. This is responsible for managing the
resolution, refresh rate and positions of your screens, and is basically what
you control if you open the System Settings > Display menu. Things you
change there will be written to the ~/.config/monitors.xml file, and is what
is applied during the startup of the computer.
Some people have suggested that it should be possible to just remove the
file ~/.config/monitors.xml, in order to to stop the unwanted behavior, but
this was not enough for me. I had to disable the entire xrandr plugin before it
would stop messing with my settings.
Disabling this plugin is done a little bit differently depending on your current desktop environment, so please make sure you choose the correct option below. After disabling it I was able to modify my display settings via the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" program, save the config, reboot my computer and all all would be good.
This info was composed primarily from this nice StackOverflow post, but I added some extra info from a couple more sources [1], [2], [3].
For this I have been able to find three different methods, which all seem to be possible to do. Test which one works best for you.
- Disable it via System Settings
Open up the System Settings > Startup Applications menu, and set the startup
entry Cinnamon Settings Daemon - xrandr to OFF.
- Override the
.desktopfile.
Make a copy of the cinnamon-settings-daemon-xrandr.desktop file in your user's
$HOME/.config/autostart/ folder, to override the system wide one, and add
Hidden=true to the end of the new file in order to disable the plugin.
cp /etc/xdg/autostart/cinnamon-settings-daemon-xrandr.desktop $HOME/.config/autostart/
echo "Hidden=true" >> $HOME/.config/autostart/cinnamon-settings-daemon-xrandr.desktop- Move/rename/delete the
.desktopfile.
If none of the above works, you can just make the
cinnamon-settings-daemon-xrandr.desktop file unrecognizable for Cinnamon by
moving/renaming/deleting it.
sudo mv /etc/xdg/autostart/cinnamon-settings-daemon-xrandr.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/cinnamon-settings-daemon-xrandr.desktop.disabledIn earlier versions of Cinnamon there exists only one option, and that is running the following command.
gsettings set org.cinnamon.settings-daemon.plugins.xrandr active falseThe option to disable individual plugins was removed in newer versions. Seems to be handled by Mutter now.
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xrandr active falsegsettings set org.mate.settings-daemon.plugins.xrandr active falseWhen fiddling around with new settings, it is always recommended to make a backup of the files which you are editing. Here are therefore two quick commands that can be run in order to make a copy of the two files which are being edited in this guide:
sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.bak
cp ~/.config/monitors.xml ~/.config/monitors.xml.bakDisabling of the desktop environment's "Display Manager" may result in worse handling of changes to the desktop layout when displays are added/removed. This is probably irrelevant for a workstation, with a static screen setup, but might become bothersome on a laptop which you repeatedly plug in an external screen to.
When a monitor is removed from the computer, the "Display Manager" (basically the xrandr plugin in this case) is made aware of this event and will call upon the xrandr program to update the display configuration and then change the layout of your desktop to conform to the now missing screen. This would also include stuff like moving all your windows to the remaining monitor, and stopping the mouse form going over to the area where the old monitor was. However, when disabling the desktop environment's "Display Manager" some of these change events might not trigger correctly.
The proprietary Nvidia driver has similar support for adding/removing screens, and will send out the correct commands to the xrandr program in order to update display configuration to the new layout.
This is a configurable option, which is called
UseHotplugEvents, and can be disabled if you do not want the computer to react at all to you changing displays.
However, since this is not done from the desktop environment's "Display Manager"
it seem like not everything in Cinnamon/Gnome/Mate will be notified in the
correct way. From some quick testing it seems like Cinnamon handles it pretty
well, but I noticed that the taskbar would not properly propagate to the new
display when I added one. This was remedied by issuing a restart of Cinnamon
through pressing Alt+F2, typing r in the text field that popped up and then
pressing enter. This now made everything work as expected again.
When clicking the "Save to X Configuration File" button, in the "NVIDIA X Server Settings" program, you might run into this error message:
You do not have adequate permission to open the existing X configuration file
'/etc/X11/xorg.conf' for writing. You must be 'root' to modify the file.
This usually happens if you start the program via the "Start Menu", since then
you will launch the program as your current user. If we take a look at the
permissions of the xorg.conf file we see this:
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.8K Mar 10 10:57 xorg.conf
This means that your current user (and thus the Nvidia program) does not have
permission to write to that file, just like the error message says. The solution
is to start the program as root instead, and that is most easily achieved by
launching it via the following terminal command:
sudo nvidia-settingsDo your changes, and press save. If you do not have any other programs that have added changes to this file, it might be a good idea to uncheck the "Merge with existing file." option in the save dialog, to make sure there are only Nvidia settings present in the file.
The xorg.conf file may be located at a lot of other places, and the Xorg
server program will read the different files in the following order (if it is
started as 'root'):
<cmdline>/etc/X11/<cmdline>/usr/etc/X11/<cmdline>$XORGCONFIG/etc/X11/$XORGCONFIG/usr/etc/X11/$XORGCONFIG/etc/X11/xorg.conf/etc/xorg.conf/usr/etc/X11/xorg.conf.<hostname>/usr/etc/X11/xorg.conf/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf.<hostname>/usr/lib/X11/xorg.conf
This is treated as expected behavior by the developers, and thus the xorg.conf
file will not be honored if you are running either of the mentioned desktop
environments. There are a few GitHub issues discussing this, and people being
told that this is how it is supposed to be:
So this guide is currently the best/only option if you are using the
nvidia-settingsprogram to store your display configuration under
Cinnamon/Gnome/Mate.
The "fix" outlined in this guide actually seems to be the method endorsed by the same guy who previously said that this won't be fixed in the issues listed above... (o.O)