doug> Thanks Tim for bringing a functional laptop w/linux for last night's meeting. Our VGA-out projector worked fine as he installed a linux Mint VM
(Mate Cinnamon) onto it.

When that finished, I wanted to show/compare Mint Mate, which I had already on my laptop.

When I unplugged Tim's laptop from VGA-out and tried my own thinkpad running Mint Mate (dualbooted, my alternate OS).....well,.....chirp.

The projector stopped projecting. My Fn-F7 key seemed to be trying to cycle thru the blind toggles/choices (Duplicate display? screen-only? VGA-only might expect), but no video came out, I had to give up, not having tried  VGA-out ever while running linux on my laptop. We put Tim's back onto VGA-out, and it also seemed dead, but we chose not to fight it, meeting being close enough to stop caring about projector, and it "wasnt a proud moment" for me.

SO I WENT HOME and plugged my (same) laptop into my TV's VGA-in port.

Started by booting win7.  I'd never noticed a detail : at WHICH POINT does this start working....should I expect to see the dualboot/GRUB menu on TV? Apparently not. Soon enough though, Win7 (the OS preinstalled by Lenovo/thinkpad) came up and VGA-out/TV started working as usual. (somewhere AFTER "Resuming Windows", it starts working).
To control VGA-out,  Fn-F7 works ...I've got (4) choices: Duplicate, Extend(laptop-screen=#1, TV-VGAout=screen2), Projector Only (turns off laptop display), and Disconnect Projector (only laptop display ON). No doubt (i surmise), thanks to windows drivers.

Feels like I learned: OS controls VGA-out (somehow naively I was inclined to believe this was more of an OS-independent hardware function).

OK, now rebooted laptop/win7 to try Linux Mint from a win7 state with "Duplicate" working.  "Shutting down Windows" displayed....laptop goes thru boot/BIOS?...TV is blank now, I've learned to expect this....Linux kernel boots, and I see some of the minimal console text messages as usual ALSO ON TV,  laptop-screen AND TV quickly go to graphical mode, also displaying the Mate background...

and this is where I was the most surprised.

TV/VGA-out appeared "frozen' with the Mate background, appearing much like my laptop screen BUT MINUS anything else (no bottom launch/status/"panel" bar.  Whatever I launch on my laptop screen, does not appear on VGA-out.  Fascinating!

Wed eve late, at my house, I could swear Fn-F7 still wasnt doing anything.

But this Thurs AM, it DOES start working a bit (same 4 choices, but blind,

 and it's strange. TV/VGA-out doesnt show EVERYTHING).

I wonder if I'd rebooted at the meeting, would that have helped, probably.
Today I play with it some more (ALT-F2 helps when I'm in that semi-blind VGA-out situation, getting SOME things to show on TV) even though I'm not likely to use this feature much?ever? at home, unless I break a leg.

Caveat, practice what you bring for meetings to project-OUT!

HDMI is also an option in our WPI meeting/conf rms if you have it.

---trivia for Mate interest...
(Mate = lightweight alternate to Cinnamon.
Their start/launch menus are  different, and I can find good stuff in Mate's Control Center.  Cinnamon's Control center looks like this:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B2V313X0LzmQclJCVkI5aFhIeDA/edit

Couldnt find a good Mate comparison Control Center screenshot

  (not sharing some high-ad google'd choices)
but I did like this decent page mostly cuz i love keyb shortcuts:

http://securitronlinux.com/bejiitaswrath/some-useful-tips-for-the-linux-mate-desktop/

where I learned

CTL-ALT-d  (lowercase "d" not DEL, which offers to reboot)

 .....lowers-or-raises what you're doing, a great "quick hide from over-shoulder" ninja move. (sorry to degrade tricks/skill(s) of a Real Ninja)

Stay warm! --doug

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