Sucess with dual monitors

[Jean Hollis Weber]

David Woyciesjes wrote:
>     And this works okay when you start the laptop without the external 
> monitor attached? Hmmm... I'll have to see if my Thinkpad A30p supports 
> dual monitors like that...


Good question. I had not tried that yet. (The thought that I 
should try it skittered through my mind yesterday and escaped 
without being acted on.)

So I just tested it. I disconnected the monitor and rebooted. Not 
surprisingly, Ubuntu came up with the dual-screen setup, and 
programs that had been last displayed on the secondary screen 
(and closed before I rebooted) could not be seen when I reopened 
them. Fortunately I quickly discovered how to move them back onto 
the visible area. (Right-click on program name in bottom panel, 
choose Move from the pop-up menu, and move the mouse until the 
program moved into the visible area.) Not ideal, but it works.

I guess if I were going to be using the laptop away from my desk 
for awhile (I often go on trips lasting several weeks), I would 
have two xorg.conf files -- one for with dual-screen and one for 
without -- and swap between them. Also not ideal...

Another thing I haven't tried yet is using the second screen as a 
clone, as that is often something I need when doing demos for 
people. Months ago, when I was just starting to try to work this 
out, I had a clone setup working fine, so I'm hopeful. No doubt 
this means yet more swapping of xorg.conf files.

--Jean