New User With Video Question Please
 

Hello,

I am BRAND new to Linux. I've just installed my first version of Ubuntu on a white box computer with a 19" monitor with little or no difficulty. What an AWESOME o/s!!!

My only question thus far is this: Before shutting down I went in and changed the resolution to 1024 x 768. Then I shut the pc down and swapped in a different monitor (15"). It made it about half way through the boot and then I got a message that said "Cannot Display This Video Mode".

The odd thing is that a few minutes later it completed the boot and everything looks fine. But on shut down the message comes up again. This same thing happens every time I shut down and start up again (I get the error message for a couple of minutes and then the boot resumes).

Have you guys heard about this? And if so is there a workaround? It's likely that I'll be installing this on many computers in the future, and that the monitor it's installed on is not the monitor it will eventually be working on. I would hate for all the users to have to put up with this every time they turn on their pc's.

Does anyone have any ideas I might try?

Thanks in advance. Aside from this, I am SUPER happy with Ubuntu!!!

Welcome to the wonderful world of Linux and of LQ. :-) Many of us enjoy the freedom of choice that comes from the Open Source movement and Linux is a big part of it.

I suspect that your video driver software cannot support 1024x768. Did you set that by using a GUI application or by directly editing /etc/X11/xorg.conf?

You can see if the 1024x768 setting is being used by opening a terminal and running xvidtune without any parameters. The top line in the settings window will show you the resolution.

I would tell you how to do it with the GUI but I don't know. I use a different window manager/desktop environment than the default GUI used by Ubuntu. You should have the xvidtune utility regardless of window manager.

Once you know the actual resolution being displayed after you log in then we can talk about what video hardware you are using and whether you can increase your resolution by installing 'restricted' drivers.