This is a Dell E5500 with docking station and external monitor on the DVI port. Fedora 17 with XFCE 4.8. If I undock the laptop with the laptop monitor off, XFCE does not automatically enable the laptop monitor. This should be recoverable as I can hit the Fn-F8 to cycle through all active monitors, which in this case should enable the laptop monitor. Under GNOME2 and Windows this is what happens but under XFCE it does nothing. If I press Fn+F8 while docked with the external monitor active, it brings up a small dialog "Display Settings" with three options: Laptop, HDMI1, and "Both displays cloned". I would expect hitting Fn-F8 again would cycle through the options but instead XFCE spawns another Display Settings window with each keypress. To work around this the monitor settings must be manually configured using Settings->Display before the dock status changes. The program that is run for Display Settings is "xfce4-display-settings --minimal", version 4.8.3
Starting from commit 4eaeaf0726dd89d9e3fd66fff37e7aaa117260c2 in master, the laptop monitor should be disabled/reenabled on lid close/open.
The Xfce way of switching monitors has always made me cringe. Did you notice pressing Fn+<monitor key> brings up multiple instances of `xfce4-display-manager --minimal` instead of cycling through the options of the current instance? And how pressing Escape does not close the display manager? Instead of patching the behavior of the laptop lid, the display manager's 'minimal' mode should be overhauled to be more cooperative and useful.
Frankly, cycling through display options is a really bad idea imho. The minimal dialog presents you some of the most used setups at a single click and you don't have to cycle, you see what you're going to get before you click.
(In reply to Simon Steinbeiss from comment #3) > Frankly, cycling through display options is a really bad idea imho. Funny, because it's not. > The minimal dialog presents you some of the most used setups at a single > click ... Except the problem is no active display so.. no minimal display dialog. * Instead of opening multiple instances of the minimal dialog, the hotkey should open one instance initially and then cycle to the next option for each additional press. * Changes should be immediate since users may not have a display and therefore cannot see their selection (current behavior requires 'enter' to activate) Those two changes would let users find a usable display in seconds. No more rebooting or walking back to the classroom to hook back up to the projector just to restore the local laptop display.
(In reply to Patrick O'Keeffe from comment #4) > > Except the problem is no active display so.. no minimal display dialog. > This particular problem may have been solved alternatively. Per bug 10590, comment 4: "Since xfce4-settings 4.11.2, monitor connection events are acted upon, and the disconnection would cause the remaining laptop display to become the only active monitor."