Disabling monitor reconfiguration when closing lid

Posted by Tomas on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Tomas
Published on 2012-06-02T04:16:32Z Indexed on 2012/06/02 4:49 UTC
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I often need to move my laptop from one working place to another. When I do this, there are two events Ubuntu responds to by changing the monitor set up:

  • Removing/attaching the VGA cable
  • Closing/opening the lid of the laptop

While removing the VGA cable gives me what I need (single screen, highest native resolution on the external screen if connected; otherwise highest resolution on the laptop), the laptop close/open lid response is not as good.

Every time I close or open the lid, Ubuntu reconfigures the monitor set up. When I close the lid now... the screen goes black for a few seconds and it switches to clone, with my laptop screen disabled. Reopening results in... briefly a black screen, then the external monitor being used as desktop extension.

Ubuntu thinks too much. My first and foremost question: Is there any way to let Ubuntu ignore lid close events?

Ideally (or when there's no way to solve above question) I'd want to change how it deals with the screen reconfiguration. Why does Ubuntu toggle the screen configuration between external, clone and single display? Can't I just configure it to always use the external monitor, when present, in single screen mode?

Note that similar questions have been asked before (most notably this one), but these have been closed perhaps wrongly.

Any ideas are very welcome, I don't mind playing around a bit to see if something works.

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