External monitor

Hi, I want to get a 24" external 1900x1200 monitor, hopefully to use simultaneously with the 17" 1680x1050 laptop screen.

So far whenever I've plugged in an external monitor and booted Linux (Kubuntu Feisty), the display only goes to the external screen, and the laptop screen is blank, completely powered off and dark. (Actually they both show the same thing during the text mode bootup phase, but when X starts the built-in LCD goes dark.)

In Windows, I can have an external monitor and the builtin screen show independent views.

How do people do this in Linux, keeping in mind that it needs to be possible to use the computer without the monitor? I figure if I add the screen in xorg.conf, it will always try to find it. Is there a way to do it without switching xorg.conf files every time? That would kind of suck.

The video card is an nVidia 7600 with 512MB RAM. I'm pretty sure the same card handles both the internal screen and the external port. Linux does support that, doesn't it?

If you do something similar, I would love to know how you have it set up.

Thanks!

 

Google and ye shall receive Since you have an nvidia card, you actually probably want to use the TwinView configuration like this guy does for the multiple monitors, but use the DDC detection script from the first link. It's not as easy to set it up as it is under Windows, but it's more "automatic" when you get it done.

 

Sweetness, that looks like it should do the trick. Guess I'll go ahead and order such a monitor.

Thanks!

 

hmmm, I do not understand where to put :

Is it ok if nv is already changed to glx under the module section or do I need to add glx somewhere else?

 

That should be all you need. The nVidia drivers are listed as either "glx" or "nvidia."

 

^Thanks for the input, unfortunately I screw up somewhere with the xorg file when I add the option render 'true" at the end of the screen heading and need to reinstall ubuntu. Can anyone here help me tried to get ubuntu to recognized my monitor. Thanks

 

Twinview!

Just set up your xorg.conf to be something like this. This is my Twinview setup on my Acer, yours may be different.

Code:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Default Screen"
    Device         "nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce Go 6200/6400]"
    Monitor        "Generic Monitor"
    DefaultDepth    16
    Option         "TwinView" "True"
    Option         "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"   
    Option         "UseEdidFreqs" "True"
    Option         "MetaModes" "1280x1024,1280x1024; 1024x768,1024x768"
    Option         "UseDisplayDevice" "DFP, CRT"

    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       1
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       4
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       8
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       15
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
        Modes      "1024x768"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~george164/dv9500t/dv9500t.html

My xorg.conf is at the link above (scroll down, middle of the page).

It is setup to use TwinView on both internal and external monitors at the same time. Nvidia card of course.

 

Thanks everyone, I have successfully setup twinview; however, the xorg.conf think my monitor is my main while the laptop is the external one. How do I switch this around?

Edit: Nevermind, I got it! I simply move everthing from the monitor to the left . Thanks again.

 

Or use the "Clone" option.

 

All right!! I just picked up a 28" WUXGA monitor on Newegg for less than $700 shipped. The TwinView configuration worked right off the bat! Awesome!

 

Did you get hotplug output working? As in, you can add and remove displays at will and have server resize correctly? My understanding is this wouldn't be available until x.org 1.3 shipped with the xrandr 1.2 extensions.

Edit:

Bah twinview is a large screen thing that should work fine with the old xrandr. It's when you use xinerama that you need xrandr 1.2 for the resize to work. AFAIK the x3100 doesn't have any features like that.

So has anybody got multihead with the ability to add/remove monitors working with the x3100?

 

No, I haven't tried hotplugging. Haven't even tried getting it to work seamlessly if I boot the laptop without it connected. Need to try that soon.

I also lost the ability to use Ctrl-Alt-+/- to change the screen resolution. That kind of stinks, as my vision is low and sometimes I need low res to be able to read some things!

 

Yeah, I don't think there is any "hotplugging" option. You'll need to reload X in order to get the second monitor running, that's the way it is. Luckily, reloading X takes about 5-8 seconds.