status of hot-swap multi-head

[ameoba]

Bossman has been talking about getting me a new machine. Everyone else has Macs and then plugs them into a large desk monitor and runs them dual-head. I can't really see a good reason to get a Mac, and I'm kind of leaning toward getting some cheapo PC laptop and throwing Linux on it (probably Ubuntu). I've run dual-head under Linux in the past and the last few times I set up a dual-head display, it took a fair bit of work.

With the current state of X, would I be able to plug a monitor into a running system and have it 'just work'? How about after restarting the X server? Would I be better off taking him up on the Macbook?


bonus : know of any (reasonably priced) laptops on the market that have more than one external display connection? Having two large monitors (with or without the onboard display) would be a major bonus.

 

[RavenD]

I've had the best luck on getting dual-displays going in such a fashion with an nVidia GPU while running Ubuntu with Gnome. Just setting the resolution/position of the second monitor in nvidia-settings and hitting apply does the trick.
I just tried it in gnome on my old P3 thinkpad (intel onboard, running Intrepid w/ Gnome), but it isn't behaving as it should. KDE4.2 + nVidia make it a pain in the ass (I think its because there's zero integration between nvidia-settings and the KDE display settings, which is not the case on Gnome).
I've never used KDE3, and I haven't had the chance to see how well it works on KDE4 on an Intel graphics controller.