Friday, October 02, 2009

Using an external 1920x1080 LCD monitor with Ubuntu/Kubuntu (intel cards)

I got a 23 inch 1920x1080 LCD screen for my laptop... AND... I got it working under Ubuntu (and Kubuntu)!

Here are the steps -

1) Edit your xorg.conf to change the virtual mode line

sudo kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf
change
Virtual 2560 1024
to
Virtual 1920 1880

2) Add appropriate mode lines to your ~/.bashrc

sudo kate ~/.bashrc
Add the following lines at the end -
# Mode lines for external LCD 1920x1080
xrandr --newmode "1920x1080" 172.80 1920 2040 2248 2576 10801081 1084 1118 -HSync +Vsync
xrandr --addmode VGA 1920x1080
xrandr --output VGA --mode 1920x1080

3) Reboot the system (Somehow logout and login did not work for me). Or if you have had it enabled, press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart the x.org server.

Rant: WHY OH WHY does KDE not have an option to extend your desktop across multiple screens?? I can do it easily in Gnome, but all KDE can do is mirror your desktop which sucks when the screens differ greatly in reolution.

2 comments:

Mithun said...

I am not sure about Ubuntu but in FC11 my X setup works without a xorg.conf at all - the default settings picks up my 24" LCD correctly without any tweaking. Maybe you should try starting X after removing the xorg.conf and see whether it is easier to manage.

Mithun said...

As for dual display setup it is in the xorg.conf Doesn't matter whether KDE/Gnome gives you a utility or not. As long as you configure X correctly you will have dual display working irrespective of the window manager.