Making Resolution Setting More User-Friendly

[Craig Van Degrift]

On Monday 04 January 2010 14:06:37 Christopher James Halse Rogers wrote:
> 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.
Thanks for the examples of xrandr's use, although in this case the solution 
needed should not require a new user to immediately mess with the system at 
that level.

I am hoping for a solution that is completely independent of MS Windows.

Is ddcprobe's EDID probing likely to improve in the near future?  My VIA 
motherboard seems to support i2c and ViewSonic has e-mailed me their EDID 
output for my ViewSonic model VE710b monitor, but all I get is "edidfail" from 
ddcprobe.  I assume this happens to a lot of folks that are trying Ubuntu on 
moderately old/or inexpensive systems.
> 
> You can also get them from the “cvt" command.
Thanks.  I have now also played with cvt.
> 
> 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.
That would be a wonderful solution which I imagine can be easily ported to 
Kubuntu as well.  I will need to study the code for gnome-display-properties, 
xrandr, and gnome-settings-daemon to better understand what is involved.  I'd 
be happy to test what you come can up with.
> 
> For added bonus points, it would talk to gdm's gnome-settings-daemon, too.
>