Ever since I switching from a IBM Thinkpad T40 with a screen resolution of 1024×768, to a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with a 1440×900 screen and NVidia graphics card, I’ve had problems with external projectors. Whether I’ve booted up the default OS, Ubuntu 8.04, or Windows XP, the projector usually shows a squashed wide-screen image or just part of an image. The laptop’s 16:9 screen just seemed terminally incompatible with every 4:3 projector out there.
\nBut recently I stumbled upon a simple solution that so far has worked with every projector and external screen I’ve connected to the VGA port. Here it is, in three steps:<\/p>\n
By restarting X you will shut down Firefox, Openoffice and other applications that depend on the graphical subsystem. But most of Linux will be untouched, which means that the process should just take a few seconds. Anyway, in my experience it is far more predictable than running the projector application that launches in Windows XP when you press Fn-F5, and faster than using the NVidia application. Ever since I switching from a IBM Thinkpad T40 with a screen resolution of 1024×768, to a Lenovo Thinkpad T61 with a 1440×900 screen and NVidia graphics card, I’ve had problems with external projectors. Whether I’ve booted up the default… Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,120,132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-geeky","category-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3820"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3820\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newth.net\/eirik\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere might be a zeroth step here: My T61 is normally connected to an external 1680×1050 monitor, via the VGA port on a docking station. This meant that I initially had to use the NVidia X server Preferences application (normally found in System\/Administration\/NVidia X Server Settings<\/em> or started by typing sudo nvidia-settings <\/em>in a terminal window) to create a dual screen setup.
\nIf you run this while an external monitor or projector is connected, you will see it listed along with the laptop screen when you press X Server Display Configuration<\/em>. In the menu under the screen layout window, press “Configure” and choose “Separate X screen”, set the resolution to Auto and save the X Configuration file. With this setup as you standard xorg.conf file, the NVidia card seems to detect any new screens and change the resolution accordingly when you restart X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"