Comment 20 for bug 539477

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Jerone Young (jerone) wrote : Re: Video out hot key sends super + p + return on Dell E5500, Studio XPS 1558, Inspiron 15 & many upcoming Dell systems

Well there is an issue here found after testing. It's not good either.

 Actually fixing gnome-settings-daemon may not be the best solution. There are 2 thinings.
         1) Even with Mike's Patch (great patch) .. the way it works is when you press the hot key it first sends super+p. Then a small delay & then sends are return key. The problem here is users gets a return key press that can have unintended consequences. We can't catch that return either. So if a user is doing something they will get a return key press, which could have all sorts of side effects that the user would not want.

         2) Apparently the Dell bios only does this only for OSes that identify themselves as Windows 7.. it does an acpi query. Of course Linux says I am Windows 7. But under Windows Vista the key only sends a video out key press (as normal).

           The best way to get around this issue (till Dell decides to fix their bios), is to pass acpi_osi="Windows 2006" on the kernel command line. So Linux says I'm Windows Vista.

   Chatting with Dell now about this.