Today I tried to hook my laptop (booted into Kubuntu) to a projector for a presentation, but the projector could not get the signal no matter what I tried.

Fortunately, I arrived early enough to test it so the presentation went off fine after I booted into windows, but it was still annoying because i figured a great way for people to be exposed to FOSS would be for it to be projected in giant size right in front of them.

After some googling, it would seem that projector support on Linux laptops is spotty at best, kind of like wifi. I'm just wondering if there are any possible solutions that I could try.

IMO, Linux is more than ready for business applications on the desktop and in the server room, but it still has a ways to go on the laptop.

Uhm, shouldn't hooking up a projector be like hooking up a second monitor?
At least that's how I do it at home, without a problem.

What videocard do you have?

Some sort of Nvidia chipset that I've never been able to get working.

Weird, at work, people use the projector all the time on redhat. Never had a problem. Don't have any suggestions, though, all they do is press some key set and it works (they don't install drivers or anything as far as I know).

A guy did a security presentation at my school a few weeks ago, and was running his ubuntu laptop through a projector. *shrug*

Probably more a video driver thing than anything else, as someone said, projector just acts like an external monitor.

Suggestion #1: Always be sure everything is working properly BEFORE it is time to give your presentation.

Most laptops with external VGA connectors have a function key to toggle LCD/LCD+VGA/VGA. This key is operating systen agnostic.

I tried the VGA toggle key, but nothing happened with Kubuntu.

With Winxp, it worked fine, which makes me think that it is software-controlled.

My laptop headphone jacks, for example, only work under windows xp.