What're the differences between "display", "display-device", "monitor", "screen" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf and the $DISPLAY environment variable?

In the xorg.conf file there are

_ Section "Screen"
_ Section "Monitor"
_ Option "UseDisplayDevice" (inside the screen section)

plus the $DISPLAY environment variable.

Which one of those 4 (screen, monitor, display-device, $DISPLAY) refers to the physical "screen (or whatever it is)" sitting on my table, and what are the other 3?

1

1 Answer

The physical "screen" is "monitor" in Xorg.

If you have multiple monitor, all of the monitor must fit into your current screen.
For example, I will query my current value with command xrandr

$ xrandr --query

I got the output like

Screen 0: ... current 8960 x 2160, maximum 32767 x 32767
HDMI-0 connected 5120x2160+3840+0 ... 673mm x 284mm
DP-0 connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 ... 597mm x 336mm

screen size 8960 is result of my two monitor resolution 5120+3840

Display

The "display" composed of many screen. Normally we don't have many screen. You can see your current display by the command w

USER TTY LOGIN@ ...
... :1 13:52 ...

You can see the current display is :1.
Alternatively, you can check it with environment variable.

echo $DISPLAY
// :1

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