external monitor doesn't work, f8

[pjsulliv]

I can not get the external monitor to work. The external monitor works under vista but does not work in fedora 8, I press fn+f8 and nothing happens.
Inspiron 1720
nVidia 8600M GT 256MB
OS: 2.6.23.8-63.fc8

I thought it was the video card driver so I loaded the Livna beta driver but it did not work
yum --enablerepo=livna-testing update kmod-nvidia kmod-nvidia-2.6.23.8-63.fc8-169.04-2.lvn8 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia
the fn+down does works (dim the screen brightness) if that helps

any ideas?

[leadgolem]

Have you tried modifying the settings in applications/other/NVIDIA Display Settings?

[pjsulliv]

Leadgolem,
You are correct! I am used to fedora 7 where you hit fn+f8 and the external monitor becomes a clone of the laptop LCD. Now using the applications/NVIDIA Display Settings I can click on twin view or separate X display. I picked twin view and pow, now I have a twin view (one desktop spread over two monitors).
Thanks, you made my Christmas!
-I am not sure how to get a clone, but who cares, I'll play around with it some more.
Thanks again!

[rbo83]

pjsulliv,

Did you have any problems installing F8 on your Dell Inspiron 1720 ? I am about to buy one and don't want to spend 4 days applying changes, parameters and drivers.

[pjsulliv]

Hi rbo83,
I didn't have any problems, the only thing that I remember was after I erased the entire disk I could not install vista. I thought I had created a brick, but then I install the SATA driver from the Dell driver disk. After that Vista would install. I then shrank vista in half and installed fedora 8.

PS: I don't use wireless LAN, bluetooth or sleep mode with f8 so I can not say any thing about that.

[rbo83]

pjsulliv,
Thanks for the input. So I will order the one with XP. Don't want to have anything to do with Vista.