Fn+F8 does not switch displays on a Dell E6410

Question

I recently upgraded to Oneric and found that Fn+F8 does not switch displays on Oneric, Dell E6410, Nvidia. I frequently run presentations and need to switch between projector and laptop with minimum fuss, so this key is important to me!

In Maverick, I managed to make it work using acpi_osi=\\\"!Windows 2009\\\" in grub (as described here: http://www.len.ro/2011/01/e6410-summary/). It's a bit shameful to go into a room of people, plug the laptop and wait 5 minutes to make the change using nvidia-settings. How can I make the Fn+F8 work again?

After a bit of debuging with xev it seems that the acpi_osi has some effect but the videoswitch does not take place somewhere else even if /var/log/XOrg.0.log shows:

[ 24182.812] (II) PM Event received: Capability Changed

Maybe there is some other place where the event is not handled correctly.

Solution 1

Finally I gave up and decided to adopt the simpler solution of using disper.

apt-add-repository ppa:disper-dev/ppa
apt-get update
apt-get install disper

and then

disper -c to switch to external monitor and disper -s to return to main screen. I also configured a shortcut in xfce which I now use to map p to disper -c

Solution 2

Better solution for me seems to be to switch external display on/off using nvidia-settings, where it is possible to detect resolution of external display and switch the TwinView feature on and off (as well as other helpful configuration options).

Comments

[William]

Try going to the system/power cog and clicking displays. From there you can switch your displays quickly.

[Christoph]

William, I think this does not work if using the Nvidia driver; in that case you have to use nvidia-settings. disper and the disper-indicator could be a viable workaround, that's what I do.

[Bruno Pereira]

its clear that the user knows what key to use and they were working before the upgrade.