External displays

[mtweidmann]

I finaly have time to install MDK on my laptop, but before Id p I have one more question to ask. At the moment to use an external monitor/projector all I have to do is press two buttons on the keyboard. Can you still use external displays under Linux? And if so how easy it?

[SoulSe]

In most cases, you should be able to plug in the external monitor and then restart your laptop, the laptop itself should handle the swap.

 

The key combination will depend on the model (check out the manufacturers' page).

[neddie]

In most cases, you should be able to plug in the external monitor and then restart your laptop, the laptop itself should handle the swap.

With Mdk10.1, I didn't need to reboot, I just plugged in the monitor (or beamer) and pressed the buttons - unfortunately the top of the resulting display was mangled and rebooting didn't fix that.

Now with LE2005, I don't get _anything_ when I connect to a projector and press the buttons - nothing on the projector, nothing on the laptop screen. With a Ctrl-Alt-F1 I can see a text console on the projector, but nothing from my X. Do I need to add a new definition to my xorg.conf (when I tried using 'Configure your monitor' in the MCC and selected 'plug n play' I ended up with only a text login - yay for backups!)

I read that someone else needed an app called i855crt, do I really need this or is it just a case of defining an additional monitor config?

[bobterri]

I have a Dell Inspiron 5160, running Mandrake 10.1. Everything is running great on this laptop, but when I try to plug an external monitor by hitting fn-f8, the screen goes blank and I have to reboot. I've tried booting the system with the external monitor plugged in, but it just does the same thing.

 

I think there is a special setting I need to add to xorg.conf, but I can't find it.

[DragonMage]

Maybe the external display cannot handle the resolution given in xorg.conf. Usually, monitors have much less maximum resolution than built in lcd. My toshiba's 15 inch lcd can handle up to 1600x1200 resolution while as far as I know, only good 19 inch monitors can handle that.

 

Anyway, I never gotten the Fn function to work in my toshiba laptop. The easiest way to handle external display (like projectors) is to reboot with the external display plugged in. The harder way is to edit some files in the /proc directory.

[Guest ottothecow]

On my Thinkpad T23, the fn combo works perfectly (external only, both, internal) but it can only clone the resolution being shown.

 

When I connect it to my desktop monitor's spare input jack, I want it to switch to 1280x1024 but it's not smart enough for that and so I get a resized screen.

 

I can always switch my resolution back up but that still requires restarting x

[lavaeolus]

Depends on your laptop, if you are really lucky, linux finds your secondary monitor and offers you to use the xinerama-extensions, then you can clone your display or extend it over both screens.

 

Another possibility is, it doesn't offer you xinerama but you could still plug in a monitor and get a cloned display (in my case 1400x1050 @ 60 Hz on the external monitor, which does not really make much fun, at least on a CRT).

 

For the display-switching, sometimes it works, sometimes not (on my box it's Fn-F5 for example, on elder linuxes I just got a crash when I tried this stunt, now on Mdv 2006 it seems to work, it least if I press them now: no crash), but maybe your BIOS gives you a choice which display should be used when you plug in an external monitor (I can choose external, internal or both in my BIOS-settings).

 

After all just try it and look what it does.