Laptop dual monitor

[daik]

Hello all,
I have a laptop that I intend to install Mandriva 2008.1 powerpack on. Now a big issue with how I use this monitor is that I will frequently (but not always) have a secondary monitor plug into it. This second monitor will be running a higher resolution than the built in display. Is this possible at all? Any thoughts, links or similar are most welcome.

[coopstah13]

you can run 2 screens with different resolutions, it can be easy or difficult depending on the graphics card you have, with nvidia cards its very easy to plug in a second monitor and then enable it using the nvidia-settings tool

[daik]

I have an intel graphics card on this particular computer. I don't think there is much in terms of direct support from the driver on this (like there is with nvidia cards). I have tried with X before, but it is just too much pain to get it going (although that was a couple of releases ago). I don't want to have two screens all the time, just when there actually are two screens attached. Anyway, maybe I will give it ago, the computer needs re-installing anyway.

[minthaka]

Don't worry!
I had an experience on a laptop shiped with a crazy SiS 771/671 PCIE graphic card, so the things couldn't had been worse. WindowsXP SP1 refused to operate with dual monitor. Mandriva 2008.1 with the native vesa driver did, although without OpenGL. So I'm 99 % sure that with an Intel you'll have no troubles.

[Grandebasta]

I have an intel graphics card on this particular computer. I don't think there is much in terms of direct support from the driver on this (like there is with nvidia cards). I have tried with X before, but it is just too much pain to get it going (although that was a couple of releases ago). I don't want to have two screens all the time, just when there actually are two screens attached. Anyway, maybe I will give it ago, the computer needs re-installing anyway.

You could install the package "915resolution", which is for the intel graphic chipset. It is a resolution modification tool.

[daik]

So in terms of setting this up, once I've installed Mandriva, is there any gotchas or other things that I need to know, or will I know what to do once I have my Gnome up and running?