Old Mac book Pro - multi display issue

Hi,
I've installed Zorin 15.2 on an old Macbook Pro I was given free and it works fine on there - 15" display - very cool.

However, I want to hook it up to an external display and this is not being detected at all. I am using an adaptor from the mini-graphics port on the laptop which gives me options for a DVI/HDMI or VGA output but neither HDMI or VGA are being detected (I don't have a DVI compatible monitor).

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T9600 @ 2.80GHz
Memory 7889MB (3188MB used)
Machine Type Notebook
Operating System Zorin OS 15.2

Display
Resolution 1440x900 pixels
Vendor The X.Org Foundation
Version 1.20.5
Current Display Name :1
Monitors
Monitor 0 1440x900 pixels
OpenGL
Vendor VMware, Inc.
Renderer llvmpipe (LLVM 9.0, 128 bits)
Version 3.1 Mesa 19.2.8
Direct Rendering Yes
Extensions
Composite
DAMAGE
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
DRI2
GLX
Generic Event Extension
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
Present
RANDR
RECORD
RENDER
SECURITY
SHAPE
SYNC
X-Resource
XC-MISC
XFIXES
XFree86-DGA
XFree86-VidModeExtension
XINERAMA
XInputExtension
XKEYBOARD
XTEST
XVideo
default screen number: 0
for s in $(lspci | grep VGA | awk '{print $1}'); do lspci -v -s $s; done
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation G96M [GeForce 9600M GT] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Apple Inc. G96M [GeForce 9600M GT]
Flags: fast devsel
Memory at e4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at c0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at e2000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 2000 [disabled] [size=128]
Expansion ROM at e5000000 [disabled] [size=512K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C79 [GeForce 9400M] (rev b1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Apple Inc. C79 [GeForce 9400M]
Flags: fast devsel
Memory at e6000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Memory at d0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at e0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
I/O ports at 1000 [disabled] [size=128]
Expansion ROM at e7000000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

Looks like you need to have a monitor that supports DVI?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro3-1/Trusty

Thanks for the tip - I will look at running those commands at some point this week to see what results I get. I'm not going to get a DVI monitor just for this old macbook though, as the two monitors I have work with every other device I own.

Thanks