how do i change the monitor driver in Ubuntu?
Thu, 2006-10-12 09:39 — danieljames
While putting together a computer for a friend i tested his old monitor on what is to be his new system. his monitor was no good, so i thew it out and put something else on the system. at this point i realize, by some course, the system changed the driver to cope with the old school monitor and resolution and refresh rate options have been reduced.
i considered doing a reinstall and ran the Ubuntu live cd. running on the live CD the options are fully available and the screen works well, but as it is, this screen is hurting my eyes.
i am having trouble thinking outside of yast2 and the 'configure monitor' button. What is the Ubuntu way of reconfiguring the monitor?
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Monitor settings
You should be able to set the resolution and refresh rate via the GNOME menu at System > Preferences > Screen Resolution.
You use different drivers for different video cards (or rather video chipsets), but monitors (as far as I know; I'm not a hardware guru) all work pretty much the same, they just have different ranges of possible screen resolutions and refresh rates.
It is possible that during the X Window System configuration process, the monitor was probed for likely maximum resolution / refresh rate, and the above tool won't give you the options you want. I'm showing my age here, because you will now be saying "what X Window System configuration process?" Of course Ubuntu now installs from the Live CD image, so my (uneducated) guess would be that it detects all hardware and configures itself appropriately every time it boots. Have you rebooted the computer?
Back in my day, you would do something like:
or else edit the Monitor and Modes sections of xorg.conf by hand.
Reinstalling is admitting defeat. You will never get your computer to respect you if you show signs of weakness.
Matthew