Ubuntu
gnome-control-center package

  1. Bug #134669
  2. Comment #3

Comment 3 for bug 134669

Revision history for this message
David de Hoog (daviddehoog) wrote : Re: Unfortunate Selection of Primary Display

As far as I know, it's a "feature" of the Intel driver that the external monitor has to be the primary display:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2#Notes_for_X31.2CT30_.2F_Radeon_7000.2CRadeon_7500_users
http://www.intellinuxgraphics.org/dualhead.html
The detail here:
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-August/027670.html

NB: I have similar issues with my (open-source driver) ATI Radeon-driven ThinkPad T42. These issues occur in both Windows XP and Linux (any flavour).

As a work-around, I'd suggest writing a small script (which is run at login to your profile) that checks if the VGA-0 device is "connected" before configuring multiple screens ... See for example: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=581947&highlight=Dual+Head