[svlug] (forw) Re: [conspire] could Linux desktop go reasonably any faster?

[Akkana Peck]

Replying a little late, but ...

Rick Moen writes:
> Quoting Steve Litt (slitt at troubleshooters.com):
> 
> > Because of lxterminal and lxrandr, I'm a big fan of installing LXDE
> > even if you never use it. Lxrandr has saved my life, many times, during
> > presentations with a projector.
> 
> This appears to be an X11 front-end (using the gtk2 graphics toolkit) 
> for the X.org 'X RandR' extension (/usr/bin/xrandr).
[ ... ]
> Typically, distro package lxrandr, as compiled, depends on:
[ long list of dependencies)
> That strikes me as a whole darned brass band, Steve.  Suggest you also
> look into obvious alternatives that include:
> 
> o  Christian Amsüss's ARandR, a graphical front end to /usr/bin/xrandr
>    requiring only PyGTK, Python2, and xrandr.
> o  /usr/bin/xrandr .  The underlying X.org utility.  It won't bite you.
>    And all you're doing with one of these other things is talking to 
>    this very utility through additional layers of software, so maybe you
>    should try just using it without bloatware middlemen.

A couple of useful xrandr aliases I use before and after talks:

# Connect to a projector on the VGA port:
alias projector='xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1024x768; noscreenblank'
# and on the HDMI port:
alias projectorh='xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 1024x768'

# and set video back to normal:
alias noprojector='xrandr --auto; screenblankon'

The screenblank stuff is so the screen doesn't go dark if the Q&A
session goes long and I don't touch a key/slide clicker for a while
(I don't run a screensaver):

noscreenblank() {
    xset -dpms
    xset s off
}

screenblankon() {
    xset +dpms
    xset s on
}

And a little script to use xrandr to probe to see what sort of monitor
is connected, and enable the right one:
https://github.com/akkana/scripts/blob/master/check-monitors

I wrote that script so that if I dock or undock my Lenovo X201,
it would automatically figure out whether it was docked with a
monitor connected, and display to the monitor rather than the laptop
screen. But I have yet to find a way to run anything automatically
upon resuming from suspend. Years ago, you could put wakeup scripts
in /etc/pm/sleep.d, but those aren't called reliably any more; I've
tried the systemd equivalent and several other methods I can't 
remember any more, and finally gave up and just call it manually
if the screen is blank after docking or undocking.

	...Akkana