Setting up an external Monitor to your Laptop in Fedora 10 is very simple. Fedora 10 onwards, the default X11 window system configuration file has been dropped and the system auto-configures your X11 system. In case you need to change a few settings to your X11 configuration (which we will be doing here), you need to generate a xorg.conf file.   Follow these simple steps and you will be up and running your brand new External display connected to your monitor. We have also included a screencast at the end to make the procedure clearer to you.

1) As root, type in the following command in your terminal. This command will install the system-config-display program. If it`s already installed, then a corresponding warning will be generated and you should move to the next step in this article.

2) Now start the Display Settings manager by issuing the command sudo system-config-display as root. In the Window that pops up, select the tab that says Hardware. Now Click on Configure to configure your Monitor Type. The list will contain a number of resolutions. Here at Digitizor, the monitor we use to write this article is a 1680x1050 flat panel LCD monitor. So we selected the entry that read LCD Panel 1680x1050 from the list.

3) Then goto the settings tab and select the highest available resolution from the list. Now it will give you message saying that the updation was successful and would ask you to restart your system for the settings to take place. Don`t Restart now. Open the file xorg.conf located in /etc/X11/ folder in a text editor. Look down for a like called Modes in Section Screen. Now, append your original screen resolution right after the keyword Modes and just before the existing resolution entries, and save the file. Now reboot, or restart your X-Server by pressing ctrl-alt-del.

4) Voila! you are now done!

Here goes the screencast:

[blip.tv ?posts_id=1754092&dest=-1]

To know how to disable x-server restarting by pressing ctrl-alt-del, click here