attaching an external monitor to a laptop makes the image bad

[Patrik Nilsson]

If you attach an external monitor to a laptop while Ubuntu is running, always makes the image of the screen look bad on both the internal and the external monitor. I have two command attached to keyboard shortcuts which sometimes can make the computer usable again, if you switch back and forth between the internal and external monitor with:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --off --output VGA1 --auto #switch on the internal monitor, external off
xrandr --output LVDS1 --auto --output VGA1 --off #external on, internal off

The success seem to depend on what programs are running at the moment of running those commands. If you only have a terminal opened it goes fine, but with Libreoffice and Firefox you need to restart Ubuntu.

Attached are three screenshots which all show the screen looks like when the external monitor is attached.

Ubuntu 11.04

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/892589/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Patrik Nilsson (nipatriknilsson)]

I read the information on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage and took a package that could be involved in this issue. One thing to note: If you start Ubuntu with the external monitor everything goes really fine. This bug happens when you attach the monitor while Ubuntu is running.