here's the situation:

Radeon 7600 AGP graphics card (vga and dvi outputs)

1) 21" NEC monitor (resolution=1280x1024)

2) 27" Gateway CRT (max resolution=800x600)
(located at the other end of the room by means of a 25' vga cable!!!)

what i want to do:

I want to use the NEC monitor to do my regular work, at the high resolution, and use the Gateway monitor to run mplayer or tvtime in fullscreen to watch movies or TV.

-- considerations:
*what input device will i use to change channels/volume ? (without interfering with my regular work on the NEC screen)
* can i somehow control mplayer (which will be fullscreened on the Gateway 27") from an application shown on the NEC monitor ?

any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-GUy

Retracted.

Set up a dual monitor display. You can run fullscreen apps in either one (or both), so you can run mplayer/tvtime/whatever on the 27" and have the controls for it on the other monitor. I used to do this with tv-out and a CRT, running xine fullscreen on the tv-out to watch movies and the controls for it on the CRT. I think you need to have xinerama enabled to have one large virtual display (otherwise you won't be able to move application windows across the monitors, i.e. if you start an application on one display, you can't move it to another, so that means you can't move the controls off of the 27" monitor unless xinerama is enabled).

Using FC4(with all updates from up2date) i couldn't get the dual-head setup to work having different resolutions on each monitor. (the NEC monitor at 1280x1024, and the Gateway 27" at 800x600). -- it wanted to run both monitors at 1280x1024 which is out of range for the gateway 27" (max 800x600 res.)

Theres another idea i've considered -- to run two X window servers at the same time -- having one display at 800x600 on the gatway, while simultaneously having 1280x1024 on the NEC, each being controlled by different keyboards/mice. Is this even possible ?
I could add another USB keyboard/mouse to control the programs displayed on the Gateway 27"

can it be done ? and where would i start ?

thanks,

-GUy

Having only one display, I can only suggest in ignorance.

But I did notice the xorg-X11-Xnest server which (clains to) run a second Xserver as a "standard" X application.

This might be an easy way for you to run two X-servers on the same box.

You might also check out the "Screen Sessions" option under both GNOME ans KDE on FC4 which let you log in as a new user without logging out the current user. (Somewhat like the "Switch User" function in XP.)