Multiple displays with laptop. Inactivating laptop display when lid closed

Hi guys,

this is the best community ever. I purchased my daughter a Lenovo T480s laptop and installed Zorin Core 16.3 on it. I am using a displaylink docking station and I managed to install the driver using this link: How to install DisplayLink software on Ubuntu 20.04 – DisplayLink Support

Also, I have tweaked the appropriate files to not have the computer close when the lid is closed.

However, I now have 3 displays which is great. However, I would like that when I close the lid of the laptop, that I now have 2 displays and that one of them become the main display. I managed to do this for my personal laptop but I do not seem to be able to replicate this for my daughters lenovo computer.
Can you help me?
Thank you.

I see that the main screen can be changed in Settings > Screens > Merged Screens, does it help with your request?

Hi, thank you for replying but it didn't work. I wonder if there is a hardware limitation?

Other solutions would be welcomed.

Thanks.

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Letting a single screen active out of 3 when closing the lid seems a bit tricky. By default, closing the lid to set a standby prevents someone from peeking at your laptop so it's understandable that the external screen does the same. When using Windows I could set that closing the lid does nothing whatsoever, so I could close it and use the mouse, but in Zorin OS this feature isn't provided by default. I searched something on GNOME Software to do this and seems Office Runner.

Hi @Luca_Pavan , I managed to do this for my personal computer and it works fine. I do not understand what I am doing wrong. There are settings in the config files, but I do not remeber, or wonder if there is not a firmware issue. I appreciate your help. Solution still pending. Thanks.

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You can see your displays with

xrandr

You can set which monitor is primary with a terminal commands - or bunch them into a script:

#!/bin/bash
xrandr --output eDP-1 --off
xrandr --output DP-1 --auto --primary
xrandr --output HDMI-1 --auto --right-of DP-1

In the Above, I assume an eDP for the Notebook Computer and DP or HDMI for the external monitors. You will need to adjust as needed to test this script suggestion.
Add the script as an autostart item with its /path/to/file if it does work...

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Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS connected primary 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1366x768      60.02 +  60.10* 
   1280x720      59.97  
   1152x768      59.95  
   1024x768      59.95  
   800x600       59.96  
   848x480       59.94  
   720x480       59.94  
   640x480       59.94  
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

How it's possible? The max I can set on screen settings is 1366x768.

My xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 1200, maximum 32767 x 32767
The min and max are stated by the GPU. This maximum is not indicative, however, of what the monitor can support. That will affect what you can set as your resolution.

I must also point out that that these sizes we each posted are... Quite Large on purpose. It does not mean that your display can render or composite on a monitor with those extreme resolutions even if you had a monitor that could handle that refresh rate. It means that technically, the x11 protocol can create a still image at that resolution. This setting of such a large value for maximum resolution allows plenty of room for Development and Growth without having to go back in and change the driver code later.
And that is all that it means...

A real world example might be that Amazon Company sets up an automated system to handle Shipping Label printing. In its early days, it was seeing maybe 50 shipments per day. But the code writer set the max that the system could handle and print at 200 Billion/day. No way they were going to reach that... But the automated system is now created and can stay in use for a very long time. As Amazon grew and developed- adding more printers, more employees, even warehouses full of inventory and all those printers tied into that automated system, it is still running without needing to be re-coded. Though once we set up a colony on the Moon, it may need some adjustments at that time.

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