Felix Miata wrote:
Michele Calgaro composed on 2015-12-30 20:01 (UTC+0100):
following up all the emails on this topic, could you file a bug report on bugszilla so we don't forget about it? I also remember some issues some time ago when I used two monitors.
IMO it hasn't been made clear that there is any bug, unless it's with lack of clear howto docs anywhere. Was KDE3 ever able to do the configuration of multiple displays? I'm not sure even KDE4 ever was able to. This WFM at the Xorg level, but without any laptops I'm not able to precisely duplicate OP's hardware configuration. Before filing, better to be sure through discussion here what the bug is, or maybe move discussion to [trinity-devel].
KDE3 or KDE4 are able to do as much as xrandr can do. All boils down to the chipset, the driver and the display.
It took my couple of hours to configure mine (attached). Perhaps it could give you some ideas. I also added/quoted some of the sources.
Also you or OP mentioned having wheezy. I mentioned I had to upgrade to jessie. In my opinion for wheezy you have to check which Xorg version and intel(i915) driver version you have installed.
I replaced in the beginning of this year Dell d520 with e5440 and found out it could not run with the Xorg version and intel driver included in wheezy.
I then had to find out that it is not possible to have both built in and external displays with their native resolutions working. Unfortunately although officially Dell was offering this model with nv chipset they were not able to deliver. I think with the nv it would consume more power, cost more but would have had better support.
Xorg suggests you try the latest version of their driver and if you can confirm the problem - log a bug.
Perhaps Ken (OP) can test with ubuntu live cdrom or usb stick and report back if something is different.