Bender (XFCE+i3WM) Auto Display Detection?

General system Newbie
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So, there is one problem I cannot seem to get fixed with almost any Linux distro. Auto-display detection.

Using a Lenovo E490 laptop with USBC gen 3 dock DisplayPort to external display. The problem arises when I am not docked. If I boot the laptop off dock, I get the XFCE login screen but it goes black after login. This is because I have the laptop display disabled when docked - otherwise, the external display does not display properly. But how can I have the connected resources automatically detected and the appropriate settings applied? Without an external display, my laptop is screen less.

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LOL it has gotten so bad, I am on my Windows laptop today… oh god…

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Have you tried other DE? Somehow I got on the gnome wagon for the past two weeks.

It is the first time for a year that my laptop and external screens just work as they are supposed to. I am quite amazed. I plug in my laptop to my usb 3 Docking and it recognize lapi and 4k screen. I close the laptop, the external screen flips to being main desktop. I plug in additional hdmi into closed laptop and secondary screen is recognized no problem!

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If it truly comes down to that, I guess I might have to go that route. I just really like the combo of having i3 and the GUI stuff from XFCE (not partial to XFCE at all, just wanted GUI for settings apps and such).

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I like that combo too…

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If that your “only” requirement gnome+pop_shell does the same thing. You will have the DE goodies and tiling using pop_shell.
I’m very biased because I love gnome but that being said you should really try it and see if you like it.

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7

So it works fine as a laptop. . . And then when you plug it into the dock, you need to manually change the display settings each time?

I’ll try and look into it today. But that may be a limitation of XFCE. It’s not known for being quite as posh as some of the other DEs.

FWIW, i also have a t480s with USB C dock and i have the EXACT same problem with both Windows and KDE on initial startup. It works ok after I’m booted in. But from a cold start i get flickering (Windows especially) and a black screen on KDE.

It may just be a limitation of the Thinkpad dock firmware.

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