Three Monitors under 11.10

Running Ubuntu 11.10 64-bit with two Nvidia GPUs (1 monitor on GPU0, 2 on GPU1) set up with displays in the order: 1.0, 0.0, 1.1.

When booting into regular Unity, everything almost freezes. Desktop icons on monitor 1.0 work, the file menu on 0.0 appears when moused over and can be opened (but not interacted with) and it appears on both the left and right side of the monitor. 3 instances of unity seem to run (or are mirrored on each screen). Holding down the super key brings up numbers as it should. Taping super brings up a menu on all 3 screens (with proper transparency?!), which allows search but cannot be clicked. It can be navigated using a keyboard, but not a mouse. Windows opened do not display (are invisible) but can be interacted with via keyboard, oddly enough. Also, no windows have decoration.

Given the dependency on compiz and the clash between Xinerama and Compiz (or almost any compositing), this is mostly expected. The proper transparency is highly unexpected though, as the monitors are not fully mirrored...

The main issue is that Ubuntu 2D also doesn't work. When logging into Ubuntu 2D, more issues are encountered. In this case, the monitors end up mirrored (mirroring monitor 1.0), even though they are set to not be mirrored. The monitor pretends to be larger than 1920x1080 in spite of being 1280x1024. Windows can be dragged to other monitors, but are invisible.

Overall, it seems pretty unworkable... Thus, Ubuntu no longer can be run with 3 monitors (excluding cases with certain ATI cards), unless using a fallback environment, at which point you're much better off installing a different distro. And from prior experience both Twinview + a second x screen and 3 x screens have proved to be less than stable with any sort of compositing (1 x screen has compositing while the other one/two do not), so those don't really seem like an option.

So more or less my question is: is there any workable situation with xinerama and Ubuntu 11.10 that isn't a fallback? And if not, any suggestions on multimonitor friendly distros?