Ubuntu and Widescreens

When I first installed Ubuntu 6.06 TLS on my laptop, I was amazed by how easy it was. All of my hardware pretty much just worked. The only thing that frustrated me was that Ubuntu didn't seem to support my nice widescreen. The System Preferences menu provided a Screen Resolution applet, but much to my despair, the only options I was provided was 1024x768 and 800x600, neither of which fits a widescreen.

So, I began searching for an answer and came across a solution called 915resolution. Following advice from various articles I was reading, I went through the arduous process of trying to get this installed and running on my Ubuntu distro, as well as getting it set to automatically change my resolution to the right mode at startup. This was so until, I learned about adding additional repositories. There is some great information over at the UbuntuGuide about how to do this. You also might want to take a look through the guide while you're there. There's great advice about how to do all sorts of things in Ubuntu. Anways, after adding the additional respositories, getting 915resolution, and subsequently getting my widescreen, well, wide, becomes a simple matter of:


sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install 915resolution


The package installs 915resolution and automatically sets the right display setting and boot options. After the install finishes, a simple reboot or Alt+Ctrl+Backspace makes Ubuntu look as it should.