Making Resolution Setting More User-Friendly

[Christopher James Halse Rogers]

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Markus Hitter <mah at jump-ing.de> wrote:
>
> Am 01.01.2010 um 01:13 schrieb Craig Van Degrift:
>
>> I have been troubled by how confusing it can be for new users of
>> Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu to get their old display hardware showing
>> higher
>> resolution.  I have attempted to write a WWW page that is designed
>> to help
>> these newbies as well as confused old-timers like myself.  Could
>> anyone
>> interested in helping with this look at
>>
>> http://yosemitefoothills.com/UbuntuLucidDisplayNotes.html
>>
>> and give me feedback.
>
> I have the same problem and solve it by putting something like this
> into /etc/X11/Xsession.d/45custom_xrandr-settings ($HOME/.Xsession no
> longer works):
>
> xrandr --newmode "1280x1024 SGI" 134.400 1280 1296 1440 1688 1024
> 1025 1028 1066 +hsync +vsync
> xrandr --addmode VGA1 "1280x1024 SGI"
>
> You can get the required numbers with "PowerStrip", a tool for MS
> Windows.
You can also get them from the “cvt" command.

I have toyed with the idea of adding this to a “Do you not see the
resolution you're after" button in gnome-display-properties.  It would
actually be quite easy to implement, although I think it'd require
extending the xrandr plugin for gnome-settings-daemon a bit.

For added bonus points, it would talk to gdm's gnome-settings-daemon, too.