Dual external monitor
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Did any of you try touchscreen monitors, and if so, what model and was anything not working?
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@GooglyBear I have a portable one. Touch works but not correctly because it maps to the built-in screen so it interacts with the touchpad. I believe this is something that Mir needs to support.
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@kugiigi Thanks for posting your experience, did you post / find an issue on gitlab regarding it? I am interested in Ubuntu Touch development, so if I get the chance I'd like to work on that, because if something like that worked it would allow portable convergence, which is what I'm after.
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@GooglyBear Sorry I can't remember if I did but you can check the Ubuntu Touch repo or Lomiri or Mir.
I did asked Mir developers about it and they said even the latest version at that time didn't support it.
Fun fact, even Gnome has this problem, it can't properly map multiple touchscreen displays. KDE however does. -
@kugiigi Good point, even having a single external display already creates a 'multiple display setup' doesn't it? I wonder if temporarily disabling the main internal one would help make the larger external one function correctly. Sure, it's not ideal, but usability first!
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@kugiigi Maybe this should work reliably: https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/userguide/advanceduse/screencasting.html
You'd need to make everything tiny on the phone, putting it into a sort of 'desktop mode' (similar to what I was saying before). That way you would be able to make full use of the large screen.
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@GooglyBear I don't know the technical details enough to be able to come up with a workaround
I tried some things, even modifying Lomiri codes, but nothing worked. -
@kugiigi I see, so convergence at the moment is mainly intended with mouse and keyboard. Any suggestions for portable monitors / external displays that have happened to work quite well with UT? I know e-ink is getting very popular these days, with video-ready refresh rates and color and it's definitely exciting, but I'm unsure how feasible they are at the moment.
To say the least, the situation is getting rather interesting, eg. https://spectrum.ieee.org/e-paper-display-modos.
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@GooglyBear Anything would be fine. HDMI input or type-c displaypprt input.
There's a ton of portable monitor nowadays. However, many of them don't have good firmwares For example, some have wonky handling of touch, charging and output when using a type-c cable.
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@kugiigi Yes, I've noticed that too reading around forums. This is why I'm looking into open source+hardware solutions like Modos (https://www.crowdsupply.com/modos-tech/modos-paper-monitor) and others, although most don't support touch yet.
Honestly, considering you're getting a 75Hz refresh rate monitor that's actually e-ink in 2025, the prices don't look that bad, although do correct me if I'm wrong.
There are even ways to add touchscreen support to any monitor, but that's a whole different story, and won't be worth getting into until UT develops touch monitor support.