Hi, I'm not a very experienced hand when it comes to Linux, so I was hoping for a little assistance today. I'd appreciate it if not too much was assumed as obvious in any ensuing discussion, since I'm a bit over my head.

First, I am running a default Ubuntu 9.04 install, I recently donloaded and installed KDE in parallel available on bootup. I elected to set KDE to the default desktop while installing it. I have a Toshiba notebook (1280x800 onboard LCD) attached to an external 23" LCD (1920x1080). My video card is a dedicated nVidia GeForce Go card, and it is running with the proprietary nVidia driver that was offered by ubuntu (version 180).

I was experimenting with the desktop options, and what I want to be able to do is run fullscreen applications (games, video, etc) on my larger external, while retaining the onboard monitor for general usage. and for the most part, this is supported behaviour.

THE PROBLEM:
Apparently, when I select the twinview option in the nVidia configuration options, it defines the screen in xorg.conf as a single resolution of 3200x1080, rather than defining seperate devices. It's not quite that simple, it can figure out where taskbars should go, KDE can define seperate wallpapers, it won't let me drag windows into unuseable screen territory. But I can get my mouse cursor lost in the invisible corner. and the list of acceptable resolutions provided in xrandr output has various lower resolutions and then one large 3200x1080 selection.

When I run applications in WINE, and I'll work with the concrete example of Guild Wars, it must read this list to determine device size, therefore Guild Wars offers 3200x1080 and resolutions below 1280x800, but nothing that actually fits m external display.

Via several hours of tweaking and forum cruising, I tried opting to run both monitors as seperate xservers. However when I attempted a reboot with that saved into my xorg.conf, both screens just went blank after passing the Kubuntu boot screen, and I ended up having to revert the xorg.conf to the xorg.conf.failsafe provided. This disabled my graphics driver and cleared out all kinds of settings, which now seems to be compounding my problems. I then went ahead and re-enabled the nvidia driver, twin view settings, and proper resolutions.

Now my xrandr outputs only one available resolution: 3200x1080
When I log out of KDE, I get a blank screen, and have to reboot to get back to the GUI login.



My questions:

Where are login GUI settings, can I fix the KDE logout issue?
Is the nvidia proprietary driver the best way to go for performance? Are there alternatives?
What should my xorg.conf setup be like?
What version of xrandr am I running, and what version should I be running?
What's the best way to re-enable a comprehensive list of resolutions for applications to utilize?



And some unrelated KDE questions:

My mouse wheel scrolls way too fast in KDE, it seems to jump a large number of lines (about 15) at once, which it does not do in Gnome or Windows XP. Where would I calibrate something like this?
Is there a way to redefine commands associated with launchers in KDE?
How much customizability is there in the Kickoff application launcher?



Thanks to anyone who reads all this, and any tips/comments/links would be appreciated!