Using projector screen with Ubuntu

Since upgrading to Ubuntu 9.04 I was having problems with using the projector for doing demos and all. It used to detect the signal from the projector to my video but I couldnt make my desktop to show on the projector screen. I didn’t care much about it then as I was able to get a colleague’s laptop and do my presentations but like last week I had to do a PostgreSQL training for which I really needed my laptop as I had setup almost everything on my machine for doing practicals.

So I thought of giving it a try to see if I can somehow make it work…

Googled it and found someone mentioning “Randr” and when I searched the same through apt-get I was able to find “Grandr” which is a GNOME Panel Applet that allows you to select screen resolution and orientation from the GNOME Panel.

Once I got it installed, connected the projector screen and opened up “Grandr” and then in the first try I was able to see my desktop on the projector screen… I did the following:

– Once Grandr was up I could see my laptop screen as LVGS and project screen as VGA
– Selected ‘Auto’ for VGA and used the normal resolution I go with for my laptop screen
– Clicked on Apply and thats it…

“Grandr ” came out very handy during the training and I was able to do the whole thing using my laptop 🙂

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Shoaib Mir
shoaibmir[@]gmail.com