I have Ubuntu 11.04 (yep, I know it's old news) on my Lenovo W520. At home, I have a dock with dual monitors. I have a pretty decent setup - things work almost perfectly (hence the reason I'm reluctant to upgrade... that and I'm not 100% sold on Unity).

Anyway, the only annoyance I have is that when I'm on travel, I use the laptop screen. When I un-dock the laptop, I need to manually go into nvidia x-server settings and change the resolution from 'Auto' to 1920x1200, or it will think I have two screens, and my mouse pointer will be able to go way off the left side of the screen. This isn't a big deal, but I need to do it every time I restart the x-server (so if I reboot, or have to kill it, etc...)

What would be really nice is if there was a way for it to automatically detect whether or not there is external monitors (which it seems to do already), and switch into the mode I select, depending on which monitors are connected. Is there any way to accomplish this? I've posted my xorg.conf file for reference.

# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 270.29  (buildd@allspice)  Fri Feb 25 14:42:07 UTC 2011

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 275.19  ([email protected])  Tue Jul 12 18:35:38 PDT 2011
#Section "Monitor"
#    Identifier     "Monitor1"
#    VendorName     "Lenovo"
#    ModelName      "ThinkpadLCD"
#    #HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
#    #VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
#    #Option         "DPMS"
#EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

        # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
                   VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "DELL U2410"
    HorizSync       30.0 - 81.0
    VertRefresh     56.0 - 76.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "Quadro 1000M"
    Option         "RegistryDwords" "EnableBrightnessControl=1"
EndSection

Section "Screen"

# Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+120, DFP-6: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0"
# Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+120, DFP-5: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0"
# Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-0: nvidia-auto-select +1920+419, DFP-5: nvidia-auto-select +3840+0, DFP-6: nvidia-auto-select +0+0"
# Removed Option "metamodes" "DFP-5: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, DFP-6: 1920x1200 +1920+0"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
    Option         "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "DFP-0"
    Option         "TwinView" "1"
    Option         "metamodes" "DFP-5: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0, DFP-6: 1920x1200 +0+0"
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection