Dual Monitor Layout und Taskbar Issue

[lithium85]

Hi Together,


This is my first post here. I didn't find anything on that special problem in the forums.
I just bought a nice shiny Lenovo Thinkpad T420 with a Docking Station (Mini Dock 3). I am just switched to LMDE and almost everything was running out of the box, yet I am experiencing problems with my monitors.
My setup is as follows:
I connect my Laptop to the Docking station. The docking station is connected to an external LCD screen.
I want the following:
While docked, the laptop display and the external screen should be running with the external screen set up "on top" of the normal screen.
If not docked, only the laptop display should be running.
When I boot while the laptop is docked I can set up the layout in System/Appearance and everything is doing what it is supposed to do. If everything stays docked, after restart everything is still fine.
The problem is when I undock and redock. Undocking works as expected, but after redocking I need to set up the external-screen-on-top-of-laptop-screen manually. My usual approach would have been to manually try to hack that into xorg.conf (at least thats what I did with my old Nvidia/Twinview configuration) but in LMDE there is no xorg.conf anymore. I think this if because of this new kernel setting mode (whatever that means).

The next problem is related: When I have the big LCD screen (where the panels are) on top of the other screen maximizing a window extends it "under" the lower panel. Any ideas on that?

Help would be very appreciated. If I finally get everything to work, I'll contribute a T420-LMDE review to thinkwiki.com

Cheers,
Bernhard

[viking777]

Most distros don't have xorg any more, but that doesn't mean to say that it doesn't still work. You haven't said if the computer you have a problem with has Nvidia graphics, so I will assume it has. Do you still have a copy of xorg.conf in a back up somewhere? If you do just paste it into /etc/X11 and away you go!

If you don't then just run

Code: Select all

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Which will create a basic xorg.conf for you to hack.

Alternatively you have

Code: Select all

sudo nvidia-settings

to play around with.

The problem about changing from one set up to the other (single screen to dual screen and vice versa) is not something I do all that often, so my solution of two separate xorg.conf files may not suit you if you are doing this regularly. But basically I have two files which I call xorg.conf.dual and xorg.conf.single (both created with nvidia-settings) and I rename one or the other to plain xorg.conf according to which mode I want.

I don't know about your "one on top of the other" problem with panels, I don't use this mode. Have you ever thought of having one alongside the other instead, enabling twinview and thus having twice the screen real estate? It is all quite easy in nvidia-settings.

[lithium85]

Most distros don't have xorg any more, but that doesn't mean to say that it doesn't still work. You haven't said if the computer you have a problem with has Nvidia graphics, so I will assume it has.

No, i am not running an NVidia card at the moment (i have one, but It is not loaded by the kernel) and therefore there is no TwinView mode.
I am using an integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics card.
lspci output:

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00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Process
or Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device 21d0
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
        Memory at f1400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        I/O ports at 6000 [size=64]
        Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: i915

At the moment I am setting up Monitor Layout using the 'Monitors' GUI located under System/Preferences.

[Jesibel]

Most distros don't have xorg any more, but that doesn't mean to say that it doesn't still work. You haven't said if the computer you have a problem with has Nvidia graphics, so I will assume it has.

No, i am not running an NVidia card at the moment (i have one, but It is not loaded by the kernel) and therefore there is no TwinView mode.
I am using an integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics card.
lspci output:

Code: Select all

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Process
or Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 09) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: Lenovo Device 21d0
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
        Memory at f1400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4M]
        Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
        I/O ports at 6000 [size=64]
        Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: i915

At the moment I am setting up Monitor Layout using the 'Monitors' GUI located under System/Preferences.

--------

I have the same problem.If I install another distro, like Fedora it works.
Then I can put my laptop in the docking and it automatically starts my docking monitors. Without fuss.
But in Linux Mint it wont turn off the laptop screen, it just sticks no matter what I try to do in xrandr.

Please help.

[rockcrawler]

Not to hijkack this thread, but I have a T420 with mini dock and am having another issue on mint 12 and debian wheezy as well.

When the laptop is docked, and I have external speakers plugged into the dock, I get no sound out of them. If I unplug the external speakers, the sound comes from the laptop. If I plug the external speakers into the laptop itself, sound comes out of them. I would really like to be able to keep the external speakers plugged into the dock, and have them work whenever the laptop is docked. Is anyone else experiencing anything similar?

Thanks in advance.