Secondary Monitor

gnuglorp · November 5, 2025, 10:49pm

Hello Linux Fans!

I’m new to linux and this community. I am so glad I’ve found it. Learn Linux TV has been a amazing source for a ton of information, which will keep me busy for a while!

I have recently downloaded Debian 13, and run two monitors, after fumbling my way through a couple of driver updates I’ve managed to get my second monitor to turn on! victory!

However, when I boot from cold (is that correct terminology? i.e. next day boot up) I’ll need to restart my system a couple times, so far no more than 3, before my monitor turns on. from my understanding, there may be a curl command or a script I need to insert into a /etc file to have a particular setting run on start up, instead of having to assign it manually?

I could be completely wrong, I’m still learning and hesitant to blindly put random commands in from various threads and help sites without fully understand the why I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

I did a search for other threads with similar issues, and only found one from 2021, but it was written by someone who seemed perturbed; so I figure I’d bring the issue back up because there dosnt seem to be a resolution (monitor pun) on that particular thread.

here are my settings!

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 8th/9th Gen Core 8-core Desktop Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [Coffee Lake S] (rev 0d)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 6th-10th Gen Core Processor PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 0d)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH USB 3.1 xHCI Host Controller (rev 10)
00:14.2 RAM memory: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH Shared SRAM (rev 10)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH HECI Controller (rev 10)
00:17.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation SATA Controller [RAID mode] (rev 10)
00:1b.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #21 (rev f0)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f0)
00:1d.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH PCI Express Root Port #9 (rev f0)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation B360 Chipset LPC/eSPI Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH cAVS (rev 10)
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SMBus Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.5 Serial bus controller: Intel Corporation Cannon Lake PCH SPI Controller (rev 10)
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (7) I219-V (rev 10)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation AD106 [GeForce RTX 4060 Ti] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation AD106M High Definition Audio Controller (rev a1)
04:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller: Samsung Electronics Co Ltd NVMe SSD Controller 980 (DRAM-less)
nvidia-smi
Wed Nov 5 16:35:17 2025
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 550.163.01 Driver Version: 550.163.01 CUDA Version: 12.4 |
|-----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+
| GPU Name Persistence-M | Bus-Id Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan Temp Perf Pwr:Usage/Cap | Memory-Usage | GPU-Util Compute M. |
| | | MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
| 0 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti Off | 00000000:01:00.0 On | N/A |
| 0% 37C P8 8W / 160W | 330MiB / 8188MiB | 0% Default |
| | | N/A |
±----------------------------------------±-----------------------±---------------------+

±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes: |
| GPU GI CI PID Type Process name GPU Memory |
| ID ID Usage |
|=========================================================================================|
| 0 N/A N/A 1830 G /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg 114MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 1989 G /usr/bin/gnome-shell 63MiB |
| 0 N/A N/A 2543 G /usr/lib/firefox-esr/firefox-esr 141MiB |
±----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
uname -r
6.12.48+deb13-amd64

xrandr
\Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
DP-0 connected primary 1920x1080+1920+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 553mm x 311mm
1920x1080 60.00*+ 59.94 50.00
1680x1050 59.95
1440x900 74.98 59.89
1440x576 50.00
1440x480 59.94
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1280x960 60.00
1280x720 60.00 59.94 50.00
1152x864 75.00
1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00
800x600 75.00 72.19 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 59.94 59.93
DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-3 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 698mm x 393mm
1920x1080 164.99*+ 143.99 120.00 119.88 99.93 60.00 59.94
1680x1050 59.95
1440x900 59.89
1440x576 50.00
1440x480 59.94
1280x1024 75.02 60.02
1280x960 60.00
1280x800 59.81
1280x720 60.00 59.94 50.00
1024x768 75.03 70.07 60.00
800x600 75.00 72.19 60.32 56.25
720x576 50.00
720x480 59.94
640x480 75.00 72.81 59.94 59.93
DP-4 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP-5 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

kazimierzkrauze · November 6, 2025, 7:48am

Hi! Welcome to the forum. It would be helpful to add some information about your system, e. g. is it a pc, or a laptop; what model; which desktop environment are you using etc.

Of course be very careful with executing commands found on the internet, so I’ll walk you through this one:

sudo apt install fastfetch

sudo - act as an administrator

apt - debian’s package manager

install - pretty self explanatory

fastfetch - name of a package I want you to install (before installing see github repo of this package: GitHub - fastfetch-cli/fastfetch: A maintained, feature-rich and performance oriented, neofetch like system information tool. )

After installing simply run fastfetch and paste here an output. It will tell you some specifix things about your system.

Good luck!

gnuglorp · November 6, 2025, 10:36pm

I actually just found out about fastfetch after seeing it on multiple linux videos online and have it installed already

gnuglorp · November 9, 2025, 1:56am

Development:

After a fresh boot-up I can suspend my system and my second monitor will activate after waking up from a suspended state. A temporary work around, still investigating the issue

gnuglorp · November 11, 2025, 2:37am

further development!

Im using X11 vs Wayland and my monitors are set to two different refresh rates, investigating how to activate a wayland session and swap off of X11

ArthurC · November 18, 2025, 8:16pm

Seems like a good move, Wayland is modernized and usually fixes second monitor issues. And because you are on Debian 13, it should already be ready to go. Try following these steps:

Logout. Now you are in the login screen.
Click on your user.
Bottom right cogwheel and select Wayland.
Now enter your password and login.

And voilá you are now using Wayland. Which by the way is the default for Debian 13 so IDK how you ended up with x11.

gnuglorp · November 21, 2025, 9:15pm

GNOME runs wayland by default, KDE Plasma has to have it enabled and having nvidia throws another complication into the mix. Second Monitor has a different refresh rate as well which is another layer if complications. It just snowballs.

ArthurC · November 22, 2025, 6:43pm

Something doesn’t add up about what you’re saying: you run GNOME desktop (as visible on your fastfetch), not KDE desktop. You are complaining about a problem that isn’t yours. If you want to complain you can go to Reddit, it’s where complain-accounts usually do that.

Also: you came here for advice and now you’re ignoring your own intentions and simply playing the doomer role. Saying “It just snowballs” is not gonna help anybody.

gnuglorp · November 23, 2025, 4:09pm

Wow okay this took a turn….

At the time of posting the fastfetch results I was running in GNOME yes, but I already have had wayland enabled and could have already swapped profiles from the cog at the login.

I’m not ‘dooming’ and I’m sorry you’ve clearly had poor interactions with people involving Linux?

Yes I came here for help, not to be re-directed with advice to go to reddit.

I hope you have a nice day Arthur.

gnuglorp · November 25, 2025, 2:32am

y’all ready for this

fun turn of events:

hours of troubleshoot: no results

hours of researching: no results (BUT TONS OF LEARNING)

The Solution! : My monitor running at 165Hz had Freesync enabled, which was preventing it from displaying because my second monitor is a TV that only runs at 60Hz.