I am using Latex for assignments, papers and presentations quite a long time. However, until recently, I did not know a solution for dual head presentation of pdfs created with the latex beamer class.
This changed with the finding of Impressive. So if you want to create a pdf with notes on the second screen you first have to set up your beamer class like this:

\documentclass{beamer}
 
\usepackage[utf8x]{inputenc}
\usepackage{default}
\usepackage{pgfpages} %This is needed for notes presentation!
\setbeameroption{show notes on second screen}
 
\begin{document}
 \begin{frame}
 \frametitle{Note Test}
   This is the frame text
  \note[item]{Note for a itemized note list}
  \note{Note for a continuous note text}
 \end{frame}
\end{document}

After that install impressives requirements and impressive itself. Then the following command will start the presentation on a beamer and notebook both with a 1024x768 resolution:

 ./impressive.py -g 2048x768 "pdfname.pdf"

Normally notes will be rendered on the right screen. So you have to set up the beamer as "left of" your notebook. With xrandr this can be accomplished like this or similar depending on your available outputs:

 xrandr --output VGA1 --left-of LVDS1 --output LVDS1 --mode 1024x768

Be sure to use the same aspect ratio and resolution on notebook and beamer. Otherwise you will get cropped slides and/or black borders.

Update: Someone pointed me to this useful article which achieved similar results by only using XrandR's scaling and positioning parameters.

Happy presenting!
Phillip