External monitors/projector

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Wednesday, 26 April 2006 at 10:40:25 +0200, Arnt Gulbrandsen wrote:
> Par Leijonhufvud writes:
>> I have a IBM Thinkpad R50e with 5.3 and x-org. Sometimes I want to
>> use a projector as a secondary monitor (mostly with beamer style
>> presentations). I haven't been able to find any good pointers on how
>> to get it to use the external monitor/projector properly. Any
>> suggestions?
>>
>> Ideal would be having the option of either have the screen and the
>> external monitor/projector show the same things _or_ being treated as
>> separate entities...
>
> The former is easy. Press some button on your laptop 2-3 times.

Specifically, the one marked "CRT/LCD" or some such.  On my laptops
(Dell) it's Fn/F8.

> The latter is sort of impossible, unless you cheat by using one of
> those 802.11 beamers.

This depends entirely on the display chip set.  Microsoft can now
handle dual displays, so more modern laptops are capable of displaying
different things on the LCD panel and the external connector.  It's
not always clear whether X can handle it; for example, I've had a Dell
Inspiron 6000 for 6 months now, and I still can't work out how to get
it to drive the external display correctly.

Note that there are many other issues with external monitors, and even
more with projectors: many projectors are much more finicky about
signal timing, and will just shut off if they don't like what they're
given.  Again, the Microsoft world has normalized this sort of thing.
If you're planning to use projectors a lot (for presentations, for
example), it's a good idea to mimic Microsoft timings.

Greg
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