Making Fedora work with laptops on docking station with external monitor

[Nathaniel McCallum]

On 10/05/2010 09:02 AM, Dariusz J. Garbowski wrote:
> On 05/10/10 05:00 AM, Peter Robinson wrote:
>> On Tue, Oct 5, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Richard Hughes <hughsient at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 5 October 2010 09:55, FlorianFesti <ffesti at redhat.com> wrote:
>>>> Sorry for my may be naive question: Why do we need to know if we are
>>>> docked or not. Isn't there exactly the same situation if the external
>>>> Monitor is directly connected to the laptop? If there is an external
>>>> monitor and the lid is closed don't we want to switch off the display
>>>> regardless whether there is a docking station involved or not?
>>> Well, I guess some people would want the laptop to suspend, but it's a
>>> very good question. Now all it needs is someone willing and able to
>>> write a little patch for me :-)
>>
>> For the Dell docking stations at least there is a power button on the
>> dock and the general way they are used (in that this is the way it
>> works with Windows) is that if the power button on the dock is used
>> and the lid is closed (power button is above the keyboard) it uses the
>> external monitor. I've no idea if its possible to differentiate which
>> botton is used. This is the case in our off with Dell D series and E
>> series Latitude and HP dock capable laptops.
> 
> There's also the case used quite often in my company with Dell docking stations, where
> the lid is open and the user uses both external and internal display in multi-monitor setup.
> Another case, used more often, is two external monitors connected to the dock and closed lid
> in multi-monitor setup.

The good news is that I'm pretty sure the "dock" is irrelevant (other
than "are we on battery power") in all those cases.  The only thing that
matters is which outputs are connected and what happens when the lid is
closed. This seems like a cut-and-dry GPM policy issue.

Nathaniel