which linux distro is best for using a tv as a dual monitor?
 

im having a problem finding a linux distro that can use my emerson 27 inch flat screen tv as a second monitor through a five pin s-video cable. ive tried fedora core 5, suse 10.1, and ubuntu dapper and come to no answer. has anyone succeeded in doing this in any other distro? i would like to avoid dual booting with windows to solve this issue.

well, normally, that only depends on your graphics card and drivers...
Can you give some information about it?

yeah i have an ATI Radeon x200m. its in an hp pavillion laptop. ive tried installing fglrx in fedora, suse, and ubuntu but it didnt seem to work. the install went smoothly but after restarting i just get a blank screen. i know that in fedora (the livna repository) there was a problem with fglrx and 64 bit processors. im not sure the details or if there is a problem with fglrx and x64 overall but i know that i do have x64.

I suggest you ask the mods to:
a) move this to the hardware forum,
b) change the title to remove any reference to "which distro?"

Otherwise, there is a good chance this will be moved to, & get swallowed up by, the mega-thread.

sorry, I have no experience with that card, aske me about NV cards and I will help... ;)

next one please...

I have this exact set up on a few distros...lol
 

Now bare with me as I can't translate things into windows talk since I’m a Linux native so to speak, meaning I've never used windows... but the 'format not supported' language that I often got from my Emerson TV (27' flat-screen) on Nvidia really came down to resolution, and my solution was to act as though my VGA port was hot-plug ready (it's not) and switch to a standard CTR monitor, once I can see the screen, I reduce or increase the resolution and switch back, repeat until you have a working resolution... at times I just got lazy and even restored to just staying in the terminal...lol hope that helps,alternatively if you don’t want to risk frying your VGA port, and if you have the time and arn't running a live OS w/ persistence... you can change resolution and monitors with reboot in between... if you need help shutting down blind, and your set to go straight into the GUI, try ctrl+alt+backspace to shutdown X and >$ shutdown -now to shutdown, of the key combo doesn’t work so well try alt+F3 that should put X in the background and you can use the terminal from there.... happy hacking :)