A couple months ago I wrote about upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 on my T60p. And in that I referenced that I could get the ‘big desktop’ working but rudely didn’t follow up with how. Bill de hÓra mentioned on twitter difficulties with getting this working, unknowingly nudging me into action.
First, follow this user’s instructions and use EnvyNG to install the relevant ATI driver. (It will probably work if you use something else to install the driver, but I can’t verify that.)
Fire up a terminal and run the ATI config tool to see which monitors the video card thinks are connected. If I run this with no external monitors I get:
cwinters@potomac:/home/cwinters$ aticonfig --query-monitor Connected monitors: lvds Enabled monitors: lvds
The ‘lvds’ is always your laptop display panel. If you now connect an external monitor (including a projector) directly to your laptop you’ll see:
cwinters@potomac:/home/cwinters$ aticonfig --query-monitor Connected monitors: lvds, crt1 Enabled monitors: lvds
If you want to use display that monitor to display you need to enable it; this requires sudo access since you’re rewriting your X configuration for next time:
cwinters@potomac:/home/cwinters$ sudo aticonfig --enable-monitor=crt1,lvds [sudo] password for cwinters: ********
This should flicker both displays. If the external display is the same resolution as your laptop display (mine’s 1600x1200), you’ll now have a mirrored version of your desktop. Cool!
To display the big desktop, Click ‘System | Preferences | Screen Resolution…’. There should be a new option available, like ‘3200x1200,’ indicating a desktop as twice as wide as what you’re using now. Choose that then click ‘Apply’.
If things are working you’ll now see an empty desktop on your external display. Click the ‘Keep changes’ button on the confirmation that pops up.
When you unplug the external display, just go back to the ‘Screen Resolution’ applet and change your resolution back to whatever your laptop panel supports.
If you have a dock and want to display and two external monitors at once, that’s doable too. First, when you start your T60p in the dock go into the BIOS and tell the display to work on ‘DVI+VGA’. Restart. The pretty Ubuntu boot sequence may show up on both monitors but it won’t last. Eventually your boot sequence will show up on either your laptop (if it’s open) or one of the two monitors. Login as normal and fire up a terminal, then see what the laptop thinks are connected again:
cwinters@potomac:/home/cwinters$ aticonfig --query-monitor Connected monitors: lvds,crt1,tmds1 Enabled monitors: lvds
This assumes you’re still viewing the display on the laptop panel. If one of the other displays is lit up you’ll see something different. Now, just like before:
cwinters@potomac:/home/cwinters$ sudo aticonfig --enable-monitor=crt1,tmds1 [sudo] password for cwinters: ********
You should now be seeing a mirrored desktop on both displays. Do the same trick as above for displaying the big desktop with the ‘Screen Resolution’ applet.
Regarding positioning: I was never able to reliably tell via software which monitor should be on the left and which on the right. IME the DVI monitor always wants to be monitor 1, so I just plugged that in on the left and the VGA on the right and everything worked. (There’s probably a way to do this, but I just want it to work.)
Sometimes when you dock with the lid closed and turn on the machine you won’t get any display on either external monitor. When this happens, open up your laptop and you’ll see the login screen. Login as normal, then execute the ‘–enable-monitor’ steps above.
I have also not been able to suspend while docked, undock and have anything good happen. The reverse doesn’t happen either, and it’s one of the things WinXP did mostly well.