The first thing I had to resolve manually was that Ubuntu come up with a resolution of 1280x768 on my LCD Monitor with 1280x1024 (which looked horrible).
First I thought the problem might be related to my display adapter/driver (ATI Radeon 9800 PRO), so after some research I tried to update my driver with some heroic shell stunts, e.g.:
sudo arp-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
Although this command was a good exercise and forced me to learn about sudo and arp-get, and even magically downloads some driver stuff and installs it, the result was that I lost the hardware accelerated 3D desktop. And I was not able to switch back again to the original driver or the original settings - As a true dummy user, I ended up reinstalling the whole beast to get the hardware accelerated 3D back..!
Next thing I played with was the tool found in the menu:
System/Administration/Screens and Graphics.
There I changed the settings of Screen1 to "LCD Panel 1280x1024" and "Resolution=1280x1024". This already did half the job, but after a restart of the system, the desktop was again at 1280x1024. After a while I found that changing the resolution to 1280x1024 in the Menu
System/Preferences/Screen Resolution
is necessary too.
So, my recipe for changing the screen resolution is:
1) DON'T change the display driver as long as hardware accelerated 3D is working
2) Change settings of "Screens and Graphics"
3) Change settings of "Screen Resolution"
4) Make sure that the settings remain with a full restart of the PC
Note: Afaik, this settings basically just change /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Yes, they just change /etc/X11/xorg.conf but beware of that file. I've invested hours to optimize my screen resolutions:
1: change that file
2: restart X
3: see that it doesn't work
4: goto 1
Your way sounds much nicer. I guess changing screen resolution is quite probably the worst and most difficult task of installing Ubuntu. Part of the problem is that there are not enough/good drivers/hardware tools to help you finding the right resolution.
The situation seems to improve now as there is quite some effort to write drivers for linux: see http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6669895837.html
here are some other good news about drivers (ATI/AMD related only):
http://linuxhelp.blogspot.com/2007/10/amd-ati-release-linux-drivers-for-their.html
however, after my first experience i don't even dare to itry out new drivers. i am afraid that my 3d desktop will just go and that I cannot turn to a previous setup. any hints on that topic (how to backup/restore), or more generally just how to try new drivers and go back to a previous one would be very welcome!
btw, how do you "restart X"? can you explain this in a little more detail? don't forget that I am a total newbie! I assume you are talking about the "X Window System"? how exactly do you restart that?
Ctrl-Alt-Backspace restarts X (yes, the X Window System). But beware: this closes all your programs and your session is closed.
Post a Comment