External display or projector

[FabriceV]

Hello,

External display is difficult using a Netbook both on XP and Linux. Default Gnome manager has often difficulties to switch resolutions or manage clone display with different screen resolutions.

You can use the software URandR
http://www.albertomilone.com/projects.html
It is a gtk one, manage saved profiles... And is not currently maintained (the author directly contributes to the standard gnome manager) and it is bugged... :-), but less bugged and more powerful than the default gnome one. It is the best one I had found!
You can stop internal or external display, manage well different resolutions, automatically update the virtual resolution, apply automatic or fixed resolutions. However take care that at the opposite of XP, in case the internal display is turn off, it is not restored automatically when you disconnect or turn off your external display. Even worse, the external display is disconnect too! (Thus, the two screens are black...). As long as you take care of this, it is OK. I is generally less problematic to turn on you external screen after the notebook is on.

There is also a good page about xorg configuration and different gtk GUI.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2#GUIs

Regards.

[voria]

Thanks for the infos, I'll take a closer look at them as soon as possible.

[voria]

Has anyone tried ARandR?
I'm using it, it's simple to use and (most important) it saves profiles as bash scripts that can be used without loading the program. It also has the support for binding a script (or more than one) to a key through metacity.

At the moment it's my first choice

[voria]

I added ARandR to my repository and posted a little howto for using it.
Check it out and let me know what you think.

[FabriceV]

Dear voRia,
I have tested Jaunty on USB key. There are still the old bugs of the gnome display manager, but it really better manages multiple screens. URandR functionalities seem to be progressively integrated. Even the keyboard fn+f4 works (that the main info) and switches to both, internal, external displays. So don't try so much to include a script (unless you want saved profile).
Regards

[voria]

I'm testing jaunty too and it works generally well with default official packages, all the main issues are fixed.
However, I dislike URandR in jaunty yet, so I'll continue to put on my repository the arandr package and the modified hal-info for enabling the FN-F4 key to be mappable.