Ubuntu Karmic and external displays
November 24, 2009 4:58 pm community, freesoftware, gnomeIt was with some trepidation that I plugged in an external monitor into my laptop today to test how Ubuntu 9.10 handles external displays. In my last three upgrades the behaviour has changed and l’ve ended up on more than one occasion in front of a group telling them I’d get started in just a minute…
But yesterday, when I plugged in an external CRT monitor to see how things would react ahead of a training course I was giving this morning, I was pleasantly surprised! The new screen was automatically added to the right side of my existing screen to make a large virtual desktop. When I opened display preferences, mirroring the screens worked perfectly. When I unplugged the CRT, the desktop degraded gracefully – nothing froze or crashed, I didn’t get a reboot, and all the applications which were displaying on the external screen were seamlessly displayed on my laptop display. Bliss! Everything worked just as I expected it to.
So kudos to the Ubuntu integrators, and the Xorg and GNOME developers, and especially to the developers working on the Intel X drivers, for making me smile yesterday. You have given me hope that this year I will attend at least one tech conference where no Linux user has trouble with the overhead projector.
Update: I meant Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, not Jaunty. Thanks to Marius Gedimas for pointing that out.
November 24th, 2009 at 7:03 pm
Red Hat’s immense work on Xorg benefits everyone, one more time
November 24th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
When you say “Jaunty”, I assume you mean “Karmic”?
What kind of Intel video hardware do you have? On my T61 with GM965 nothing happens if I plug in a monitor, until I open the display settings dialog — just opening it is enough to have the monitor autodetected and autoconfigured.
November 24th, 2009 at 9:33 pm
[…] See the original post: Safe as Milk » Blog Archive » Ubuntu Jaunty and external displays […]
November 25th, 2009 at 12:48 am
I assume he meant Jaunty, because under Karmic, its not good. When I plug in an external monitor, I get the correct resolution, etc, but its not mirrored, and the exact second I try to open the display preferences, hard crash.
If it works, stick with it. I’m hoping things get better though.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:35 am
Well, as long as projectors fail at DDC, don’t expect too much out of our ability to magically configure them. VGA signaling combined with big conference rooms where the projector is far from the connector you plug to your laptop means that we don’t get the information that this is a 1400×900 projector, so we have to assume something limited like 1024×768. Then the projector gets angry, then you get angry, and you get to start mucking around with resolutions and looking like a loser up on stage while your audience cracks jokes about the year of the linux desktop.
Some day DisplayPort will save us all. In the meantime, my recommended method is to sneak in before the talk, configure everything, and don’t reconfigure your displays on disconnect. Then you get to walk up, plug your laptop in, and look awesome.
November 25th, 2009 at 7:37 am
I too assume he means Jaunty. Jaunty handled external screens excellently for me. Karmic does not.
Torben
November 25th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Updated: In fact I meant Karmic (9.10). Codenames are so confusing!
November 25th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Unfortunately, it raises the bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-intel/+bug/438000 for hardware which is limited by a virtual screen of 2048×2048 with compiz enabled.
November 25th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
[…] in an external monitor into my laptop today to test how Ubuntu 9.10 handles external displays. More here In my last three upgrades the behaviour has changed and l’ve ended up on more than one occasion […]
December 1st, 2009 at 6:21 am
Dude, thanking Ubuntu/Canonical for this is really ill-directed. They contributed round about nothing to this. This is mostly work done by RH and Intel which Canonical just integrated. Which is an OK thing to do, but it would be nice if you’d credit where credit is due.
Ubuntu is very good at getting credit for other people’s work, but it would be nice if some as educated as you in all things Free Software would not fall to that.
December 1st, 2009 at 10:15 am
Hi,
You thought that “kudos to the Ubuntu integrators, and the Xorg and GNOME developers, and especially to the developers working on the Intel X drivers, for making me smile yesterday” was giving too much credit to Ubuntu developers? The positive result was on Ubuntu Karmic, but I believe I gave credit where it was due. I didn’t mention Red Hat by name. But I believe I’m pretty clear on where the credit goes, and I don’t think I’m wrong.
Dave.