Problems with external monitors on my laptop

Yesterday I got my new laptop and switched from Mac OS X to Ubuntu. The graphics chip is an intel 3000 chipset of the new sandy bridge processors. Now, I am having trouble with my external monitor, a dell ultrasharp connected via VGA. (at the moment)

The situation I want to have:

  • Monitor disconnected, laptop lid open: laptop screen
  • Monitor disconnected, laptop lid closed: suspend/hibernate
  • Monitor connected, laptop lid open: two screens side by side, of course with max. solution. The external monitor should be the main screen.
  • Monitor connected, laptop lid closed: external monitor as main monitor, laptop screen switched off.

That used to work on my mac quite well; When I closed the lid it hibernated, but I could wake it up by typing on the keyboard while the laptop was closed and the external monitor showed the picture.

Now, I have several problems with Ubuntu.

  • Connecting the monitor while the laptop is running produces bad pictures, the monitor is flashing and I have to pull the cable. When the monitor is connected while booting, it works side-by-side
  • Unity: when I close the laptop, everything becomes black and doesn't react anymore, even though in the system power settings I set the behaviour to "blank screen". Opening the laptop again, results in a black picture on both monitors, only the mouse arrow is visible. But still nothing reacts and I have to reboot the laptop manually.
  • Ubuntu classic: Here, when I close the laptop, the external monitor shows the desktop, but in bad resolution. In the monitor settings, I recognize that the system thinks it is the laptop monitor. (detect monitors) After opening the laptop again, it becomes black just like when unity is running and I have to reboot.

After some googeling, I feel like some other people have the same problems using natty. What could I do about it?


Solution 1:

I solved it using an old kernel 2.6.37. Apparently, the new 2.6.38 branch has problems with the Arrandale chips.