Living with Linux on the Laptop: More on the Dealbreaker

I finally broke down and configured the laptop’s BIOS settings to send output to both the built-in LCD panel and the RGB video output on boot. That’s not at all what I want. I want the Fn+F5 key combo to work, but this might be an acceptable short-term compromise. I got excited because, prior to X starting, I was seeing the boot messages perfectly on both the built-in LCD panel and on the projection screen. When I started X, however, the display was garbled and unusable. I went into the Nvidia server configuration applet and mucked around a bit. I finally got the two displays to look okay…just okay, but it could have worked except that I couldn’t see my mouse pointer on the built-in LCD. I could only see it on the projection screen. Aiiiiiieeeeee! This is waaaaay too much effort. I wonder if SuSE or Ubuntu is any easier. I had actually considered doing this experiment with Slackware, which although lacking a lot of the automated tools of other distros, almost always seems to work. I’m going to do some research at the Nvidia site and elsewhere, but it looks like it’s going to be Windows again tomorrow.