Monitor madness

[John Morris]

Ok, I'm helping convert an XP user.  I'm doing it long distance though.
Testing with live images hasn't went well but have narrowed the problem
down a bit.  It is the video setup that is going Boom!

Guy has an older ATI RV370 with a 32inch TV on the DVI port (via HDMI
converter) and a 1600x1200 4:3 monitor on the VGA port.  Booting the
Fedora 21 media goes boom, junk on the displays.  CTRL-ALT-F2 will get a
text console though, which is kinda curious.

Ok, try disconnecting a monitor and the VGA display is fine on XFCE or
MATE.  With XFCE the TV can be reconnected and it will mirror.  I know
XFCE used to be able to configure a dual display but didn't want to do
it now.  Mate on the other hand just dies when the TV is reconnected,
yielding the same random gibberish on both screens that booting with
both does with no obvious way to recover.

So I guess step one is make both displays work. Step two of course is to
get them to both work without hot plugging as that would get old real
quick.  If autodetection could be nuked it might be a start.  Or
figuring out what is different between XFCE booting with both and
hotplugging. I'd guess the root of the problem is the DVI port is being
picked as Primary if it is present at startup. Never heard of a boot
switch to change it though.  Haven't manually configured X in a few
years, haven't needed to.  Just not sure what this unusual situation
calls for.

One last datapoint.  Threw more distros at it.  A SystemRescueCD disc
brings up a graphical desktop without a problem, saw the VGA as primary.
Ubuntu fails pretty much the same as Fedora.
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