[SOLVED] How to switch between monitors in KDE?

[DoubtingT]

Hi,

I have an Acer Aspire 5750 set up with an external monitor, keyboard and mouse.
I'm running a laptop as a desktop because my area is prone to power cuts. I run
the setup with the laptop monitor disabled.

We had a power cut yesterday and although the onboard battery stopped the
laptop going into a dirty shutdown, I realised belatedly that I had no way of
lighting up its own monitor to continue working or shut it down properly.

Is there a hot key combination that works with Mageia 2 64 bit to get back to
the laptop monitor?

Thanks in advance.

[viking60]

Does it work with an external monitor? Shifting back with <fn>+<F5> could work.

[DoubtingT]

Thanks for looking in.

Sorry, I should have mentioned this in my first post.

You're right, <fn> +<F5> will give the swap function according to the Aspire manual, but I assume this is only running Windows. It doesn't work in Mageia - I tried it with both monitors running and with the laptop monitor turned off. No effect. I just wondered if there was a combination under KDE that had the same function.

[tom_]

if so, you need to find a command to switch the display output
and then associate a KDE keybinding to that command

if you have an nvidia card you can try to use disper

http://willem.engen.nl/projects/disper/

here some more info on disper:

http://maketecheasier.com/change-linux-displays-on-the-fly-with-disper/2010/12/22

or you can use xrand, here some example:

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-change-display-resolution-settings-using-xrandr.html

[DoubtingT]

Hi,

Unfortunately I don't have an Nvidia display, so couldn't use Disper. I
installed lxrandr which gave the option to switch monitors without going into
System Settings. I don't know whether that affected the options available
elsewhere in the system, but a little experimentation yielded the following
result:

I opened System Settings, then:

Shortcuts and Gestures

Global Keyboard Shortcuts

KDE component = KDE Daemon

This had a Switch Display option, but no assigned hotkey. I just clicked on it
and entered Ctrl+F5.

Bingo.

That key combination now cycles the displays through one, the other or both.


Thanks to everyone who looked in.

Title of post edited to clarify subject matter.