X200s and two external monitors

[maciejs]

Hi,

I am toying with an idea of buying an Ultrabase for my x200s and use it to drive two external displays, 1920x1080 each. Now, while I know that the hardware is capable of doing this I was wondering if and how I configure this in Linux.

I'd like to be able to extend my desktop to both screens (laptop panel disabled) and still enjoy the benefits of hardware 3d acceleration with similar performance as with single display. I would also like to be able to dock/undock the laptop without having to reboot and (hopefully) with the resolution adjusting automatically, between 1440x900 and 3840x1080. Being able to use the displays in pivot would also be nice but I could live without it.

Did anybody manage to acomplish something like that in Linux (on the same/similar hardware)? Any thoughts would be apreciated.

[maciejs]

Hate replying to my own posts but... Well, according to this website setting up dual screen shouldn't be a problem. I'm still not sure about 3d acceleration on a desktop of that size and hot dock/undock with changing the resolution on-the-fly.

Can anybody provide some input? I'm interested specifically in the Ultrabase docking station support in linux. I know that there's a hardware "undock" button - how well does it work? I used an Ultrabase with Thinkpad X30 and the "undock" button worked very well.

Thanks guys

[maciejs]

Ok, I did some testing and connected an external display (17" 1280x1024) to my laptop through VGA port as I don't have a docking station around. I'm running Karmic and the screen wasn't immediately detected but when I opened the Display applet in the Preferences the screen was detected straight away - I didn't even have to configure anything and my destkop was extended to the external display. Disconnecting the screen was a similar story, desktop size didn't adjust until i opened the Display config window.

The 3d performance was pretty much on par as when using the laptop panel only, just that on the compiz's cube rotation there a noticeable framerate drop but the performance was still ok. I also tried playing flash videos on the external screen and that was fine as well. I'm guessing that performance should be at least good enough when running two fullHD screens, one may have to disable some compiz's features/plugins though.

Overall there was only few minor glitches, like the wallpaper scaled all wrong and gnome menu had to be scrolled through to get to the entries (even though there was way more than enough space to display whole menu) but these are things I could live with.

I'm thinking that the autodetection of external displays should be handled properly by the Ultrabase since it has the 'undock' button on it, if it works ofcourse.

Anybody care to share your thoughts/experiences? Thanks in advance.

[untitled_no4]

I have a T500 which has an ATI graphics and two outputs, DVI and VGA, so it's not exactly the same thing, but here are my thoughts:
1. If two display ports are supported then it will be possible to have them two running under Linux. You will probably have them cloned to begin with so you will have to set up xorg and xrandr to allow this. Have a look here for an explanation on how to achieve this: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2. This page refers mostly to Ubuntu and ATI cards using the open source driver, but the process should be similar if not exactly the same using other cards on other distributions.

2. My dock for the T500 also has the undock button on it and it's pretty much useless for me, although I haven't tried it for a while. Since I'm using Kubuntu Karmic which boots very quickly it's not a big issue for me to reboot the computer when I want to dock or undock it. It's not like I dock/undock it every five minutes.

[maciejs]

Thanks for your reply mate, this thread was turning into my personal log or something... (-:

I checked that website you linked to and if I understand it correctly I'd have to go with the xrandr method to get the resolution changing on-the-fly. X200 Ultrabase has a Displayport and VGA ports, so if both would work setting up destkop extended to dual screen shouldn't be much of a problem. I'm thinking that the best approach would be to put together a script that would change the resolution on the ACPI dock/undock events. Does that make any sense?

What do you mean by saying that undock button on your docking station is useless? I remember ages ago playing with an Ultrabase for X30 and that button worked pretty much as it should (unmounting the optical drive and all that). So if you could explain what happens when you try to use it on your docking station that would be great.

[untitled_no4]

Yes, once you have both screens running they will be cloned, so with xrandr you will be able to set them up to be next to each other and extend your desktop to both screens.
ThinkWiki has an example script on the page that runs when X starts and determines what monitors are connected and runs the correct xrandr command. I guess you can take that script as the base of what you want to do, which does make sense. Look around in ThinkWiki, perhaps the information is already there as it has a wealth of information for ThinkPad users with Linux.

As for the undock button, let me try it again and I'll let you know what it does...

[untitled_no4]

Okay. Once I click on the undock button usb devices are disconnected and the firewire external hard drive is unmounted, but the external screens are still connected and showing my desktop while the laptop screen is not firing up.

I guess that yes, a script can be written to take care of screens once you press the undock button, but in my case I think it will still not be very useful for me since when I'm using external screens I like to have two panels, each on every screen, while I use only one panel when I'm using the laptop screen. Perhaps I could make the script switch between desktop configuration, but since the computer reboots in about a minute I don't think I'm going to worry about it much, not now at least.

[maciejs]

Thanks a million for your replies. This gives me a good idea what's involved in configuring that kind of setup. If you wouldn't mind commenting on one more thing - what's the resolution's of the screens that you use, what graphics card do you have and how do you find the 3d performance on dual screen setup (if you use the acceleration at all).

I'm trying to get an idea whether I'll be able to use compiz on a destkop of that size (3840x1080, powered by Intel 4500HD). Apperently the performance is quite good in windows (see the link in my first post).

Thanks again.

[untitled_no4]

My T500 comes with the switchable graphics, which means I can choose between ATI or Intel, but according to Lenovo the Intel card can only use the VGA port which means no dual external monitors, so I've never even tried using it, especially since I already knew how to set up the ATI drivers to my liking.

My two screens are 1440x900 each. I use Kubuntu so the 3D effects are through Kwin and not Compiz, so performance might be different using Compiz. Most 3D effects do work (I can only think of one that doesn't) and resizing windows is very slow but I know the culprit is the ATI driver since my office desktop has an older ATI card which is not supported anymore so I use the open source drivers and resizing windows works perfectly. The performance is the same whether I use the laptop's LCD or the external screens (the effects, obviously, span over two screens instead of one).

[maciejs]

ok, so i tried it, two 1920x1200 monitors connected to the X200s via the Ultrabase, one on VGA and the other on DVI to Display Port adapter; long story short - it works great and even a bit better than i hoped for;

i was able to do the whole configuration in 2 minutes flat (using mouse only) on a fully up to date karmic 64bit; 3d acceleration works surprisingly well, for example i can use all the less-spectacular compiz features or play two 720p movies on each screen simultaneously with only a slight frame drop (i suspect it could be because of the hdd which is only 5400rpm), single 720p movie plays fine but i'm yet to try 1080p movie; picture rotation obviously works as well;

undocking is pretty much as i wanted it to be, i press 'undock' on the ultrabase and external screens are disabled, laptop panel is enabled, set to correct resolution and i'm ready to go; docking it back results in different, seemingly random effects (mirror screens or some screens disabled and things like that) but setting it up again takes another 2 minutes, so i can live with that for as long as it doesn't bother me enough to find more automatic solution;

ultimately i am very positively surprised how easy it was to set it all up and how pleasant it is to actually use it in linux