Nvidia - Keep external monitor settings between reboots
 

I recently installed Kubuntu 9.04 + Nvidia driver 180.44 on my Dell Latitude E6400 (1440x900) with NVIDIA Quadro NVS 160M. I have the G2410 1920x1080 external monitor. The monitor is connected via VGA. I am very pleased to have the monitor running at full resolution. However, the settings don't stay intact after rebooting.

If I have the monitor connected and turn on the the laptop, only the laptop screen is active. Then, I press Fn + F8 twice to switch to the external monitor which is always reset to 1440x900. After logging in I open Nvidia settings and switch the external monitor resolution to auto. There is a warning about Meta modes and I do auto fix. Then compositing is disabled, so I open system settings, turn off then turn back on desktop effect. Also, if I want to switch back to the laptop display, it stays stuck at 1920x1080 on the laptop.

Is there any way to set this up so it is automatically detected when the external monitor is plugged in and runs at the correct resolution? With my old M1330 and Intel X3100 graphics card, it would do this and was very convenient switching back and forth between the laptop display and external monitor.

To save the configuration to your xorg.conf file.

I think that nvidia-settings can do that, though I've never used that myself. I just edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf by hand. You can setup as many monitors and layouts there as you wish.

I also edited the xorg.conf file by hand using the preview xorg.conf file created by nvidia-settings. However, the computer wouldn't boot to the login screen afterwards and I had to restore the backup xorg.conf from TTY.

I use 3 sets on nvidia settings ( on the same monitor): normal, subdued (for night time) and one for games.

I have saved each one to a different file and created 3 icons on my desktop.

So for example to load the game settings the relevant icon runs:

this starts the nvidia-settings program, tells it which file to read and terminate. After the game I simply click on one of the other icons.

Nvidia - Keep external monitor settings between reboots
 

Here's how I had to do it on 9.0.4:

Click "System", "Preferences", "Display". If you get a windows that says, "It appears that your graphics driver does not support the necessary extensions to use this tool. Do you want to use your graphics driver vendor's tool instead?", click NO.

Set your resolution as you want, and exit the config.

Settings should remain after a reboot.

Hope this helps.

JP