@Cameron Colley
Spoken like a true fanboi. Attacking the messenger and providing no help whatsoever; typical of the Linux world.
I can get multiple monitors working, thanks very much, what is not possible is proper control over configuration. It's not me that can't do it - it's actually impossible to do*.
Gnome will *ALWAYS* default to screen 0. X will *ALWAYS* declare screens in certain order. This means that one screen will *ALWAYS* be default, there is no way to configure that (other than dragging everything about at the start of every session) and it is bloody annoying when it's the wrong one (e.g. external VDU connected to a laptop - gnome will always default to that rather than the laptop screen; irritating).
And I must disagree with your assement on multi-head support. Windows has Linux licked there. On Windows I can hot-swap monitirs without out need to reboot/restart a session, I don't need to piss around with some crazy virtual desktop crap and be stuck with one screen that must always pan, I can quickly and easily configure screen (resolution, position etc) via an intuitive GUI AND, I can tell Windows which one is default/primary! The Linux options pale by comparison, virtual desktop/clone and that's yer lot basically; it can't even do separate backgrounds for the screens FFS!
Like I said, there is a lot to like about Linux but it really falls down hard on some really basic features. Managing screens being one.
*How do I know this? Because I have spent, err, wasted a lot of time finding out, that's why. linuxquestions.org, thinkwiki.org etc.