Living with Linux on the Laptop: The Dealbreaker

So, I was very excited this morning to start teaching my class using Linux, Open Office, Xine, minicom, etc., but then the dealbreaker happened. As a trainer, I need to have my laptop display active at the same time as my projector and, when I powered up my laptop while it was connected to the projector, the projector worked fine, but the laptop screen was blank and the Toshiba function key (Fn+F5) used to toggle between displays had no effect. (Of course it doesn't work; the Toshiba utilities are for Windows machines.) This sucks! I’ve been Googling and Yahoo’ing like crazy trying to find a solution and, so far, no luck. This means I have to go back to Windows, at least for the time being, but I’ll keep working on it and let you know what I find.