Making Fedora work with laptops on docking station with external monitor

[Dariusz J. Garbowski]

On 05/10/10 07:09 AM, Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> 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.

What about the case where "we are on battery power" and a projector or external monitor connected
to the VGA port, no dock (with lid either open or closed for single or multi-monitor setup)?

Dariusz