Ubuntu Feisty, despite being wonderful in almost every way, doesn’t automatically detect and deal with the Dell 2005FPW 20″ widescreen monitor that a few of you may have. The solution is fairly simple.
- Boot into the horrible looking wrong resolution
- Crack open a terminal
- Type “sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf”
This will get you into the configuration file which controls the display. We need to add a few lines which tell Ubuntu exactly how to handle this monitor.
Replace the Monitor section with this:
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "DELL 2005FPW"
UseModes "16:10"
HorizSync 30.0 - 83.0
VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0
Option "DPMS"
EndSection
Change each of the “modes” sections to include the default resolution, which is 1680×1050.
Modes "1680x1050" "1280x1024" "1152x864" "1024x768" "800x600" "720x400" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Finally, add the modeline itself to tell Ubuntu how to handle the monitor. This goes right at the end.
Section "Modes"
Identifier "16:10"
ModeLine "1680x1050" 146.2 1680 1784 1968 2256 1050 1051 1054 1087 -hsync -vsync
EndSection
That’s it – now save and reboot, and you should be working in full resolution. Hurrah!
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