[lug] Laptop with external screen?

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 09:13 -0600, Michael J. Hammel wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-03-16 at 06:21 -0600, Rob Nagler wrote:
> > I just got a laptop running Centos 5.4.  I want to run it dual-headed
> > when I'm at my desk, and just with the builtin screen when I'm out and
> > about.  Xinerama does fine, but it doesn't detect that the external
> > display isn't there.  This is a known "bug".  While I've seen
> > solutions where I can reboot to fix this problem, this is annoying.
> > 
> > Anybody know of a solution to this problem?
> 
> Depends on the video driver, but have you tried xrandr to set the
> displays?  It's manual, but if you're driver supports it then you just
> run it during or after X has started.  I used to do this with my laptop
> though GNOME now supports a GUI interface for doing this for my Acer
> Aspire (Intel graphics chips).  
> 
> I know Intel video drivers support xrandr.  I think nVidia does. Not
> sure about ATI.

It's the distribution that supports xrandr or not.  My Fedora 12 system
with an old ATI r200 chip in it does.

I think the real problem for the original poster is using CentOS
5.4/RHEL5.4/Fedora6 which is pretty dated by now.

One solution for Rob is to try something like Fedora or Ubuntu on his
laptop if he can accomplish the same tasks without using a 5.4 based
distribution.

I very much like what I've read about xrandr. As with all things Linux,
there is some adjusting to do and not everything works perfectly but it
is a major improvement over what we had in the past.

I thought something was wrong when I read "Xinerama"! OLD

-- 
Maxwell Spangler