12.6.5. External Monitors: LCD, CRT, TV, Projector
There are several different methods to activate support for an external monitor: as a BIOS option or during runtime with a keystroke e.g. <Fn>+<F4> .
Read the X11 docs about your graphics chip carefully, for instance for the NeoMagic NM20xx chips you have to edit /etc/XF86Config by configuring intern_disp and extern_disp . Note: As far as I know these options are only valid for XFree86 3.3.x, for XFree86 4.x I couldn't find a similar option.
If you can't get the external monitor to work with XFree86, try a demo version of the commercial X11 servers mentioned above. Also check with the RedHat and SuSE WWW sites as they may have new, binary-only, X11 servers that may work with your laptop. Or check X11 servers from X.Org .
12.6.5.1. Tools
The atitvout utility may be used for executing several configuration commands for the TV Out connector of ATI Rage Mobility P/M graphics boards under GNU/Linux on x86. It is intended primarily to enable TV Out support after bootup and for switching the used TV standard from NTSC to PAL.
s3switch will allow you to switch your display between the various output devices supported by the Savage (CRT, LCD, TV).
nv-tv-out is a tool to enable TV-Out on Linux for NVidia cards. It does not need the kernel, supports multiple TV encoder chips. You may use all the features of the chip, down to direct register access, and all resolutions and sizes the chip supports.
i810switch is an utility for switching the LCD and external VGA displays on and off, with almost every graphics chip from Intel's i8xx family, including Centrino.
i855crt is an userspace driver that can enable the CRT out (port for external monitor) on Intel 855GM based laptops.
12.6.5.2. Solutions
Klaus Weidner has described a Dual monitor setup without using xinerama, but x2vnc instead. This approach allows to dymamically add and remove the second monitor without reconfiguring or restarting anything.
* License
