Okay, I have a laptop dell inspiron 4k which i dual boot redhat 9 and windoze xp. When i'm at school or at the coffe shop i need to use the laptop as a laptop and thus far with lots of patience and research everything works great.

Now when i get home, due to limited desk space, i would like to plug the laptop into the port replicator/docking station.
Plugged into the port replicator is a monitor which sits on my desk. I'd like to use this monitor rather thean the screen on my laptop to do work at home. Might anyone have any suggestions as to how to keep the video going to the monitor rather than to the laptop screen(which is closed) when x windows starts? The text comes up fine on the monitor, then after the text login it switches power and video to the laptop screen which is located under the monitor stand. I've searched all over and cannot find anything. Any help is greatly appreciated.

So i did find out that you can use fn - f8 to switch between the monitor and the lcd. Now i need to know how to do it without having to press fn - f8 since the lid to the laptop is closed and located underneath the other monitor.

Hi Jonnyfive,
have you found a solution to your problem yet, because I am faced with exactly the same issue. I have to press fn F8 three times for the external monitor to come up. Everything works fine in Windoze.
Thanks,
Patrick

I have not figured out a solution yet. I would imagine that you could write a short script to find out if there is an external monitor plugged in to determine which monitor to use in the xconfig file. I'm not sure that would work but It's the only guess i would have on how to do it. For now i just have the port replicator set to the side of my monitor. Good luck....