Problems with Dual Display with Radeon Mobility 7500

[William M. Quarles]

Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Friday 21 August 2009 18:20:06 William M. Quarles wrote:
>> I'm trying to set up a spanning desktop on my Dell Latitude C640 laptop,
>> which has an ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 graphics chipset and a Dell 1504FP
>> LCD monitor in analog (VGA) mode. I use Gnome on Fedora 10.
>>
>> I can (sometimes) get the spanning desktop to work using
>> System/Preferences/Hardware/Screen Resolution from the Gnome menu with
>> the laptop configured to be on the left, and the external display
>> configured to be on the right. However, this is actually the opposite of
>> my physical setup at my desk. Every time that I try to switch the
>> displays to their actual layout, the desktop still spans, but the
>> displays are mirrored, which is not only useless, but can also cause
>> problems, especially when sometimes it results in the display without
>> the top and bottom bars missing (!). Does anybody know how I can get
>> this work properly with the laptop on the right and the external monitor
>> on the left?
> 
> I would try to do it from the command line first, using xrandr. You can put all 
> desktops left, right, up, down of each other, overlap, rotate, reflect 
> sideways, upside-down, inside-out, and whatnot...
> 
> When you sort out the options that make it work as you wish, you can put it in 
> ~/.login or /etc/rc.local or whereever...
> 
> man xrandr
> 

It seems that putting the command in ~/.login is not useful, as it gets 
overridden. I still have to run xrandr manually every time that I log 
in. That is, unless I have to do something besides creating the ~/.login 
file, entering the xrandr command in it, saving the file, and then 
setting the ~/.login file to be executable. Does anybody know what else 
would need to be done?

I also don't see how using /etc/rc.local would do any good, as I would 
think that Fedora would still be in "text-mode" at that point. Then 
again, I know next to nothing about current x.org stuff and how to get a 
spanning display properly configured.

HELP! I need somebody... HELP! Not just anybody... HELP! You know I need 
someone... HE-e-elp!

Peace,
William