Login Screen Doesn't Anticipate Bad Laptop Monitors Where External is Used Exclusively
I have a laptop with a broken monitor that I have hooked up to my TV as its exclusive monitor.
In Ubuntu 16.04, the login prompt appears on any screen you move the mouse-pointer to, but in Ubuntu 18.04 (GNOME 3), the login screen only appears on the bad monitor: causing me to have to perform a blind login each time I log into this laptop.
I discuss this issue with more detail here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1340809/
The solution I propose, is that the login prompt should be mirrored to all connected monitors by default! This way, as long as the user has one working monitor, they can at least get logged in without doing a blind login.
Additionally, once logged in, it is a pain in the ass to reach the display settings without doing a google search on another computer. Here too, I had to blindly hit the super key (seeing absolutely nothing) and then type system settings
(not even seeing the characters I was typing). Thankfully, GNOME 3 was not so dumb that it launched the system settings dialog onto the bad monitor; it did at least launch it onto the screen that my mouse-pointer was on. From there, I was able to disable that bad internal laptop monitor and use the TV exclusively. So, after first login, I recommend that all connected monitors be mirrored by default (until the user explicitly configures the display settings for extended monitors). It is stupid to try to anticipate the orientation of extended monitors anyway. So it should be mirror by default and this will prevent the 2nd issue I mention of having to do a blind launching of system settings
!
Another recommendation, is that "display settings" should be in the context menu that appears upon right-clicking any connected monitor! Duh! This way, if one of a user's monitors has a hardware level issue, after logging in they can simply right-click on a working monitor's desktop to get to system setting > display!
Please don't overlook any of the 3 recommendations I've made in this email. They are all sound and they should all be done. I'm a developer with over 24 years of experience. I've been in the Linux game a long time too and over and over I see the same crap: about the time that a desktop is solid and battle-tested, we always move on to new crap that doesn't anticipate all the scenarios. By the time you fix this, GNOME 5 will be out, and it won't address the very issue I'm reporting right now! It's frustrating.