Ubuntu 7.04 - Thinkpad R60 - dualscreen/brightness/hibernate

[snessiram]

About a week ago I installed ubuntu 7.04 (before that ubuntu studio & xubuntu lower versions). Almost everything seemed to work out of the box: wireless, screen resolution (+ proprietary drivers), sleep, firewire...
I used envy for ati drivers (although I think it's unnescessarily) and got compiz to work.

Now there are still some things I'd like:

1) dualscreen
I've seen lots of topics about it, but none of the ones I found gave me a decent description and/or actually worked.
The screens should be SXGA+ (thinkpad) and XGA (crt) or WSXGA+ (lcd, occasionally used).
Please note that I'm using the ATI X1400.

Here's a copy of the important parts of the xorg.conf:

Code: Select all

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "Default Layout"
	Screen         "Default Screen" 0 0
	Screen         "aticonfig-Screen[1]" RightOf "Default Screen"
	InputDevice    "Generic Keyboard"
	InputDevice    "Configured Mouse"
	InputDevice    "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
	InputDevice    "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
	InputDevice    "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
	InputDevice    "Synaptics Touchpad"
EndSection

<snip>

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "Generic Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
	Option	    "VendorName" "ATI Proprietary Driver"
	Option	    "ModelName" "Generic Autodetecting Monitor"
	Option	    "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Generic Video Card"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	Option	    "VideoOverlay" "on"
	Option	    "OpenGLOverlay" "off"
	Option	    "ForceMonitors" "lvds,crt1"
	Option	    "Centermode" "off"
	Option	    "OverlayOnCRTC2" "0"
	Option	    "PseudoColorVisuals" "off"
	Option	    "HSync2" "31-64"
	Option	    "VRefresh2" "56-75"
	Option	    "UseFastTLS" "off"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "aticonfig-Device[1]"
	Driver      "fglrx"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
	Screen      1
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Default Screen"
	Device     "Generic Video Card"
	Monitor    "Generic Monitor"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     1
		Modes    "1400x1050"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     4
		Modes    "1400x1050"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     8
		Modes    "1400x1050"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     15
		Modes    "1400x1050"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     16
		Modes    "1400x1050"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth     24
		Modes    "1400x1050"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[1]"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[1]"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[1]"
	DefaultDepth     24
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
	Mode         0666
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
	Option	    "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

2) brightness
When I press FN+END, brightness goes all the way down. When I press FN+HOME, brightness goes all the way up. When I double press FN+END, it goes down a little (same for HOME).
I've seen problems about brightness but not exactly what I have, more things like OSD not showing up and non-responsive keys.

3) hibernate
When I press FN+F12 (or hibernate through menu), the screen goes dark with a blinking cursor in the left bottom corner. The sleep led on the screen bottom blinks too. I for a moment see some text ("resume" being on almost every line, don't have time to read more of it) and then I get the same screen I get after locking the computer.
There have been people with hibernate problems but it's always in combination with sleep, while sleep works just fine for me (except point 4).

4) sleep
Sleep works, but when into sleep, the computer resumes when I open the screen, I don't want that.

5) keyring unlocking
Everytime I restart I need to re-enter the password for the default keyring, I don't see the point as I always just entered the password to login/unlock when I get it.


That's it for now, if I experience other problems I'll post it here too.

Thanks in advance for anyone responding or even just looking at this post .

[lilserenity]

Hiya,

Very good info, especially on the dual screen setup (which I presume sets up an extended desktop, not just a mirrored display) which I will look into to see if I can get something like this working on my Radeon 7500 based T40.

If I get this sussed then I will have pretty much got everything working on the T40 using Ubuntu 7.04 myself--apart from the modem sussed. (I haven't tried the modem yet, although apparently it's not to too difficult)

I'll write up my tv out notes in due course!

Thanks,

Vicky

[lilserenity]

Well I have finally sussed out a reliable method for detecting an externally attached monitor and configuring an extended desktop setup on my T40 with Ubuntu 7.04 when it is plugged in on boot up.

I cannot even begin to say how much this feels like a sense of achievement Sure this stuff is so much easier in Windows (and it should be in Linux too, but that's a tricky thing with lack of vendor support etc.) but I have unlike with Mac OS X and Windows 2000 and XP got my T40 to output at my TV's (it serves a computer monitor too via VGA input) native resolution of 1360 x 768 Before my closest was 1280x720.

That in itself is very pleasing!

Tomorrow I'll upload my guide of how I set up my T40 as everything now seems to be working beautifully

Vicky

[snessiram]

I'd love to see your guide lilserenity, haven't really had time to fix my problems/wishes yet.

[lilserenity]

That's good to know It'll be very thorough. Admittedly I haven't 'solved' everything as my guide is in some ways my reinstallation notes! But either way it should get most users with a T4x series and probably other Thinkpads a shunt in the right direction with getting the remainder working in Ubuntu and Linux in general.

I've learnt a lot. Anyway the guide will be about 10 pages or so, I've made it thorough since many guides I have read have spots where the author has assumed pre-existing knowledge and you have to fill in the gaps, sometimes which is an infuriating comparison between three or more documents which have the solution; but it lays somewhere in between the 3-4 guides

I'll flag it up as soon as it's done (tomorrow basically!)

[snessiram]

...I've made it thorough since many guides I have read have spots where the author has assumed pre-existing knowledge and you have to fill in the gaps, sometimes which is an infuriating comparison between three or more documents which have the solution; but it lays somewhere in between the 3-4 guides...

Glad I'm not the only one thinking that.

I'll mess up my current installation till everything works so I can do a clean install afterwards .

[lilserenity]

Oh absolutely, I'd much rather battle through something, ruin things and learn from it and then do again properly; that way I find you really learn something. It has to be said when it comes to technology; I'm not an enthusiast for one thing like Linux, Apple, Microsoft etc.; I just appreciate good technology and I think Linux is good technology--but there's still some way to go before anything like 'the year of desktop Linux' happens.

That said though; I personally could not go back to using Windows as my main OS, I happily use it at work and don't find XP a bad operating system (not so keen on Vista, too much glitz) but I just love the customisability of a Linux system; hence why I really pushed the boat out in getting this one sussed

I'm most proud of getting all the VGA Out stuff working good and proper with auto detection and mirror/extend options. Maybe I should learn Python and GTK+; but then my work would be redundant due 7.10 due in 2 months