Alexandru Cabuz wrote:
Hello,
I am using a Dell Latitude D600 with Debian testing. The external monitor
switch is in software, and it seems like xorg does not recognize it.
I just did the apt-get dist-upgrade to KDE 3.5 and rebooted and everything
seems OK except Fn-F8 does not have any effect (it's supposed to switch to
external monitor).
However, what is interesting is that if I use Ctrl-Alt-F4 (for example) to
switch to the fourth virtual console, then Fn-F8 *does* work. But as soon as
I switch back to the 7th virtual console (which the X server uses) the image
automatically switches back to the LCD display and Fn-F8 doesn't have any
effect again.
So it seems like this is a problem of the X server.
I have noticed the same thing after I went from XFree86 to XOrg. XOrg seems to
take over / block the software switching. This was with an older version of KDE
(3.4, I think), so maybe you have a different/additional problem. As far as XOrg
is concerned I have found three possible solutions:
1) For some video cards a program is available to switch CRT and LCD on and off
yourself. In my case I found the "i810switch" Debian package for Intel graphics
cards. Maybe something like that exists for your card as well. You can even put
the command in an ACPI script so that you can toggle the monitor output by
pressing a button.
2) Before I found out about i810switch I used the following trick: Switch to a
console, activate the external monitor with Fn-F8 and then restart X without
switching back to the F7 console. I used "invoke-rc.d kdm restart" for that, but
I guess it will also work for [gx]dm. With some beamers it was then necessary to
do a CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE restart of XOrg to get rid of flickering. I don't
know if this works for other graphics cards as well, but it might be worth a
try.
3) You can set up xorg.conf for two displays as an alternative server layout.
This does not integrate nicely with kdm, therefore I did not pursue it any
further.
Regards,
Florian
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