I feel like I've gone back 5 years on my desktop today. I'll try not dump to much frustration here...

I been running 12.04 since alpha with the ATI open source drivers and the gnome 3 desktop. I been generally very happy with them with only small issues along the way.

Now of course it does not support 3D acceleration 100%, so games like my newly purchased Amnesia from the Humble bundle would not play. OK, no worries, the ATI driver is in the repos so let me have a go I thought. With all this testing that's been done with multi-monitor support, what could go wrong...?

How I use my computer:

• It's laptop, with a HD 3670 card in it.
• I spend about 50% of the time working directly on the laptop (at home) and about 50% of the time working with an additional display connected (at work), multi desktop environment.

What happening now:

• installed drivers
• things seemed to working, save some small other bugs (not critical)
• this morning I take my machine and plug the additional monitor into it, and nothing happens... ok fine.
• open "displays" try configure dual display, won't work
• open ati config "thing" (cause it is a thing, a crap thing) and set-up monitors there
• reboot it says (oh ffs, really.... ok)
• reboot, login and wow, I got a gnome 2 desktop (presume gnome 3 fall back) and no multi-monitor...great. (screenshot: http://ubuntuone.com/5tFe3QNFsTSIGvUSVLsyL7 )
• after getting into a situation where I had to Ctrl + Alt + Del to get out of a frozen display, I eventually manage to set-up a single display desktop on the "main" monitor
• ok.. time to go home... unplug monitor... nothing happens.. oh boy here we go...
• try displays again, nothing, just hangs the display.. great. crash all the apps and reboot...

So it's been a trying day...

What I really hope is that someone else has figured out how to avoid this PAIN.

Please help with a solution that:

• allows me run fglrx (so I can run the games I want)
• allows me to hot-plug a monitor to my laptop and remove it again
• allows me to change the display so include the hot-plugged monitor (preferable automatically like it did with the open drivers)

Next best if that's not possible:

• switch between laptop only display and monitor only display easily (i.e. not having to reboot/logout/suspened etc)

Really appreciate the time of anyone that has a solution.

Thanks in advance.

Regards Brendan

PS: I guess I should file a bug about this too, so some direction as to the best place to file this would be appreciated too.