I'm using Awesome Windows Manager as my "DE" on a Thinkpad X220. What is the best way of managing switching screen output (VGA/Displayport/screen)? I found a few suggestions here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Sample_Fn-F7_script . At least one of these at least, grandr, doesn't seem to work - it segfaults (on Arch anyway). And some of the other look perhaps overcomplex and potentially fragile.

I assume DEs like Gnome, Unity etc. probably have some baked-in way of handling Fn-F7. But for those who are using a "desktop environment" or windowsmanager which doesn't automatically handle this, what would you suggest as the best/easiest/most reliable way of switching video displays on a laptop? (particularly one with two different video-outs)

i don't understand.
grandr is only mentioned in one sentence at the very bottom of the wiki article, like a suggestion?

on archlinux, it only exists as a little-used AUR package.
comment says: "This one segfaults on x86_64. use xorg-grandr-git instead."
fwiw, i have been using arandr for years.
arandr is in [community].

in any case, do you have trouble switching to external monitors, or do you just want the convenience of mimicking familiar behavior?

Yes, so I had read the comments on the grandr package in AUR and installed arandr.

I suppose I'm just interested in some sort of easy way to switch between displays. Perhaps arandr is the best. But it seems like a keybinding could be useful.