On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

Ok, first of all it’s not here because the actual code is spare three lines identical to 0.1. The big difference is that the Fn+F7 part is now controlled thankfully via ACPI. ACPI in this case is the ‘thing’ that triggers hotkey events such as Fn+F7. This means the script is called in a much neater way in the system.

I’m sure many Linux gurus will be like, “Yeah so what–we knew this anyway.” Well I’ve found it now, how to call the script on an ACPI event. So this will make whatever work I do from here a lot cleaner.

I’ll post it soon.

Also I have a stack of emails to reply to, and comments here too. I’ll do my best to answer ASAP; as it’s fair and this blog has had quiet days and I’m really appreciative of all the wonderful feedback and so forth Lil old me eh, who’d have thought it; using Linux for a mere three months and already hacking around getting some stuff working fairly simply. That’s what I love about Linux in 2007; it mostly on supported hardware works great and allows you to work, but if something doesn’t work, it’s almost like you’ve got the right to rewrite the bits that are broken, with a closed source OS you’d be dependent on the vendor for that!

I hope one day I’ll get back to LyX and writing Memoirs of a Time… After all that is my real passion.

Whew what a productive day.

I’ve written a script to easily switch between LCD, VGA, LCD+VGA Mirror, LCD+VGA Extended Desktop (Dual Screen) on a ThinkPad and other Radeon based laptops; for all systems using Xrandr 1.2 and Xorg 7.3; such as Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon.

It works well and can be bound to the Fn + F7 key combination. It’s not perfect, it’s basic but it does what I need it to do, does it well and it’s minimal. I will develop it further in time with a GUI and complete reconfigurability.

At its simplest, this is the easiest way to make the most of your external VGA screen, easiest way to mirror and the easiest way to to create dual screen setups on a ThinkPad on Ubuntu and Linux. Probably. Well once it’s installed it just sits there and works Read on to find out more…

The inevitable bug reports as comments on this post would be good. As would your feedback. Please be nice

Download: OutputSwitcher.zip

Read the rest of this entry »