Multiple Monitors on a Laptop with Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

Recent movement of machines around left me with an extra monitor that I could use as an external display with my laptop running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

From reading numerous websites, I guess that multiple monitor support didn’t improve with 9.10 over 9.04, but I did find a couple of articles that helped me craft a setup that works for me.

The original articles are:

• Karmic dual monitors now assigns second monitor as primary specifically post #3
• Adding universal shortcuts in ubuntu/gnome (view the google cache version)

What I ended up with was a couple of small scripts in my bin directory called ext-on and ext-off:

ext-on

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --output LVDS1 --primary
xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto --pos 0x0 --output VGA1 --auto --right-of LVDS1

ext-off

#!/bin/sh
xrandr --output VGA1 --off --output LVDS1 --auto

I then used gconf-edit to bind those commands to <Super>-2 and <Super>-1 respectively to turn on and off the external monitor.

Hope this helps someone else looking for an easier way to manage a second monitor than having to go into display properties every time you connect to an external monitor.

Sunday January 17, 2010   ·   Permalink

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