Extending Your Ubuntu Desktop Onto Your TV, When Your PC Uses an ATI Graphics Card

Like with anything else these days in the world of computers and multimedia, there are 99 different ways to skin any particular cat, but here is a super-simple recipe for this situation. Because I like my "home office" to be in the living room, the main requirement is to be able to watch movies on the extended desktop - which is output to the new fangled flatscreen TV via a simple VGA cable (from a laptop) - while maintaining the ability to use the laptop without interrupting whatever's on TV!

So then, the all-Important and/or main H/W Ingredient is simply: a long VGA cable. LONG it should be all because you don't want to sit too close to the TV, as this can be bad for your eyes.

Instructions:

1 - Download and install (or use your synaptic package manager to install) the driver package for your ATI graphics card. This package should be called xorg-driver-fglrx.

2 - From a shell, as root, run the command 'aticonfig --initial --input=/etc/X11/xorg.conf'.

3 - Restart X with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE.

4 - Connect your laptop to the TV with the long VGA cable.

5 - From a shell, as root, run the command 'aticonfig --dtop=horizontal --overlay-on=1'.

6 - Restart X with CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE.

7 - Your desktop should now be twice as wide, with the extended desktop to the right, visibile on TV and/or extra screen.

For more info, research aticonfig by running 'aticonfig --help'.

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Welcome to the latest "'o the day" blog, blog fans! This blog will feature all my favorite tips for optimising not only your desktop/laptop setup, but also hot tips for optimising home entertainment technology, or even optimising your servers - if like me, you like systems administration, or even do it for a living. This blog may touch on other subjects also, like future trends in information technology, or even comics, but the biggest overall subject of all will probably be open source software. This doesn't mean we will never touch on Windows related subjects, only not so often. Whatever the hell ever, enjoy!