Using Vim/Gvim with multiple GUI windows
Currently gVim cannot have separate 'toplevel' windows for the same process/session. There is a TODO item to implement an inter-process communication system between multiple Vim instances to make it behave as though the separate processes are unified. (See :help todo
and search for "top-level".)
Take a look at GNU screen used in conjunction with Vim.
First window, start up gnu screen and vim
xterm
screen -S edit
vim
Second window, connect to screen session:
xterm
screen -x edit
Incredibly useful over large xinerama desktops, multiple virtual screens, or VNC sessions. One session of Vim, with lots of tabs, is all you need.
-- Tom
It's been some time since you asked your question and many things have improved. Nvidia has much better driver support for multiple monitors on Linux.
I've now stopped using Gvim since I moved over to KDE: Now I'm using vim-qt. It allows you to open multiple instances, in case you don't want to use vim in the terminal.
edit: