Choose which Monitor Wine or Play on Linux Selects when Full Screen

I play Windows games on Linux too, and my go-to workaround for this is to tell Wine to emulate a virtual desktop. For some reason, this makes Wine start up on whichever monitor the PlayOnLinux window is on.

Full Steps to set up your game:

1. Open PlayOnLinux

2. Click on your game, and click the "Configure" button at the top of the main interface.

3. Go to the "Wine" tab and click "Configure Wine".

4. In the Wine Configuration window, click on the Graphics tab and check the box that says "Emulate a virtual desktop". Change the desktop size to be the size of the monitor you want to use for playing games.

Then to open your game:

1. Open PlayOnLinux

2. Drag the PlayOnLinux window to the monitor you want to play your game on

3. Run the game, then keep your mouse cursor on the same monitor until Wine launches. After Wine launches, you can play the game on that monitor, and also use your other monitors like normal.

Dual (or multiple) monitors can be referred to through a modified DISPLAY environment variable.

Usually, it's set to :0, but the individual screens can be referred to by their own numbers, like :0.0 and :0.1 for a dual monitor setup.

As a disclaimer, I've tinkered with this in the past, but my dual monitor system is down at the moment so I can't empirically test it to make sure. Give it try though.

DISPLAY=:0.0 wine ...
DISPLAY=:0.1 playonlinux ...

This should restrict the output to a single screen. Hmmm, I have a nagging thought that it refers to the multiple desktops available with many desktop environments. Desktop 1,2,3,4 and such.

This might not work. (There, I said it...)

I just tried this on my single monitor laptop... :0.0 displays on the current screen, current desktop.. while :0.1 returns "cannot connect" ... and did NOT display anything on any screen or desktop. This shows promise! Try it!

There is an option you can use in xorg.conf, to swap your monitors and select first which you want (but may just work for nvidia? i can't test without):

In my case, my /var/log/Xorg.0.log identifies 2 monitors:

[ 37083.836] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): HP LA2006 (DFP-0): connected
[ 37083.836] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): HP LA2006 (DFP-0): Internal TMDS
[ 37083.836] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): HP LA2006 (DFP-0): 330.0 MHz maximum pixel clock
[ 37083.836] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): 
[ 37083.847] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): DELL S2419H (DFP-1): connected
[ 37083.847] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): DELL S2419H (DFP-1): Internal TMDS
[ 37083.847] (--) NVIDIA(GPU-0): DELL S2419H (DFP-1): 340.0 MHz maximum pixel clock

And, adding this option to "Screen" Section in xorg.conf did the work:

Option  "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-1, DFP-0"

It worked for me right now, just restarting X after the change, and can play windows games in full screen in my main or first monitor.