Good morning all!

I just downloaded Ubuntu 16.04 in Dec. and really have zero experience when it comes to computers in general, but I am trying to educate myself.

So I'm running on Intel Core i5-2400 @ 3.10ghz w/ GEForce GT710 through a VGA connection (no clue if I said that all correctly lol).

When I was going through and "personalizing" my Ubuntu, I noticed that the highest resolution I was able to obtain is 1360x768. I'm running Windows 10 on another hard drive and am able to obtain 1920x1080 through the Windows side. Is this something that I am able to play around with in Ubuntu? And possibly update/upgrade? I've tried to make everything on my screen smaller, but that seems like just a temporary fix. any help would be greatly appreciated and I will try and provide any further information needed as best as I can. Thanks!

wnderw0man,

Welcome to LQ.

This article refers to the use of a second monitor but you will have a better idea of your available resolutions using xrandr:


http://goinglinux.com/articles/Conne...ing_VGA_en.htm

It's time to open the Terminal!

I must admit, at first it was intimidating opening the Terminal and playing around in there, but it's been so much fun! Thankfully my partner knows some stuff and I am super thankful to helpful people like you beachboy2! Much obliged!

Typically proprietary graphics drivers for your graphics device are not installed automatically, the proprietary drivers will give you computer's default resolution along with faster response and a few more upgrades.
The Ubuntu community is large and quite helpful. In this article, you will want to perform step 2 next to the post with the green check mark. You should join this forum and post there if you need more assistance. Your graphics card does need nvidia-375 but not Bumblebee as it is not an optimus Nvidia adapter. Nvidia recently release an update to this driver, it's number is now 378, eventually that will be the default version that will be available for your card for many Linux systems, the transition to the newer version can happen any time now so may be good to ask in this thread if the 375 is still the one available in the repositories for your version of Ubuntu.

EDIT: Another method of installing the drivers with less command line stuff.

Try https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RestrictedDrivers

$ xrandr

See what resolutions it might offer. You can also check /var/log/Xorg.0.log depending on your GPU brand. I have a laptop that has a LCD 1366x768 screen, but outputs via HDMI as well. Depending on the distro I have to change resolutions after starting X, a lot of times it defaults to the lowest common denominator of 1024x768. The resolution can be changed with xrandr. Or amdcccle, or nvidia-xconfig, depending on GPU.

$ xrandr --output HDMI1 --mode 1920x1080 --panning 1920x1080 --primary --output eDP1 --mode 1366x768 --panning 1920x1080

Is how I setup my hp stream 11s to use an external 1080p display. The --primary part lets you fullscreen and fill the 1080p screen. The --panning 1920x1080 on the smaller screen lets it scroll around with the mouse while being a clone of the bigger screen. I often set the backlight to off on that screen. But the GPU still treats it like it's on.

$ xbacklight -set 0%
$ xset dpms force off

Then touch the shift button a couple times or move the mouse to bring the 1080p screen back on. The amdcccle or nvidia-xconfig options are gui frontends to fiddle with the settings. A lot of times xrandr will still work, even with those GPU types.