I'm fairly new to GNU/Linux in general, so I wish to expand my knowledge on the topic. Today I installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on my computer while dual booting with Windows 10. While at installation the display size on my monitor was very stretched and It was kind of annoying, nevertheless It didn't bother me because I realized it could be related to drivers.

So then, I waited for Ubuntu to update, and therefore maybe the drivers would be installed and configured too, I was surprised to find out that, even after updating, I still could not change my resolution display. So I looked on Google and found out several answers, none of which I could really comprehend myself, I managed to make it work through xrandr, but the change was not permanent so, other places said to configure xorg.conf, so I did, and the issue still persists... maybe I did not configure it correctly, but I assure you I have very little knowledge about all of this.

I'm pretty certain this question has been duplicated several times now so, I'm sorry but I cannot find any other way to make this work, and I don't want to be stopped just because some silly display resolution not being recognized. If this helps, my motherboard is MS-7721, and my processor is AMD A8-7650K Radeon R7. Thank you for helping me.

Also, a small note, I tried Ubuntu on the same computer a few years ago with the same computer, I was using an older version of Ubuntu, which I believe included fglrx, and I had no resolution issues, hopefully that's not related.

2 Answers

Unfortunately this is a common problem for me. It turns up with older or GPU on-board computers. Actually I think display resolution is one of the very sore points of the otherwise excellent hardware handling of Ubuntu.

Here is a lengthy procedure with all the stuff to follow. Basically you force the PC to set a certain resolution, because you know the native resolution of your monitor. Do not use this if you monitors change very often. You will find out the right resolution parameters (no need to understand them), and preserve them in a file called "/.xprofile" in your home directory. In my installation that was usually missing, so I created it. The only content was the resolution setting, which is fine.

Hope it helps

Procedure

When the monitor is just detected as default standard, the screen resolution might be limited to e.g. 1024x768. That is even with the proprietary Linux drivers installed, e.g. on a GTX580 machine. The nVidia desktop panel is just a hollow shell to write driver parameters into a gui instead a text file. It misses all actual parameters, the only input choice is free text.

• When the Desktop GUI tool has set a too high resolution for the monitor/projector to display, go to a terminal and delete the file

  rm ~/.config/monitors.xml

• List available resolutions with xrandr

  xrandr

• Set another resolution with xrandr. Those last for the current settings. The modes must exist with xrandr.

  xrandr --output LVDS --mode 1920x1080 --rate 60
  xrandr --output VGA1 --mode 1280x1024

• Make sure in your "99-vesahack' file has a high enough video RAM setting. A value too low may be the cause that no higher resolutions are allowed. The value 10000 is considered high enough to cover all modes

  sudo nano /use/shared/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-vesahack Section "Device" Identifier "Screen0" VideoRam 10000 EndSection

• The port names differ by driver!

  Analog: intel UMS=VGA, intel KMS=VGA1, radeon=VGA-0
  Laptop scren: intel ums=LVDS, intel KMS=LVDS1, radeon=KVDS
  DVI: intel ums=TMDS-1, intel KMS=DVI1, radeon=DVI-0
  DP1 = display port output
  TV = integrated TV output

• See the status of available and used resolutions

  xrandr -q

• Set a new, not yet existing mode with xrandr for the session use the cvt command. It calculates from the current monitor timing the values for a propper display format for the monitor.

• The example is to add a mode for HDTV 1920x1080 with 60Hz. Note that the cvt numbers are wrong for that res.

  xrandr -q / note the name of the connected screen, e.g. DVI-I-1
  cvt 1920 1080 60
  # 1920x1080 59,.86Hz (VCT 0.48M3) hsync:37.25 kHz; pclk:38.25MHz
  Modeline "1920x1080_60.00" 38.25 800 832 912 1024 600 603 607 624 -hsync +vsync // copy this part with mouse select & click
  xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00" 38.25 800 832 912 1024 600 603 607 624 -hsync +vsync
  xrandr --addmode DVI-I-1 1920x1080_60.00
  xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --mode "1920x1080_60.00"

• Possibly omit the '"' around the mode term

Add those lines to the ~/.xprofile file. Create it if it does not exist. In the above example it looks like

$ne .xprofile #!/bin/bash xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00" 38.25 800 832 912 1024 600 603 607 624 -hsync +vsync xrandr --addmode DVI-I-1 1920x1080_60.00 xrandr --output DVI-I-1 --mode "1920x1080_60.00"
$chmod 755 .xprofile

You can manually start the script as well

sudo ./.xprofile

Remember that the data is different for each pc!

To update the drivers is far easier command line. Open terminal and download drivers using wget and install using DPKG.

sudo dpkg -i file name

However, I don't think there are drivers for this video card and Ubuntu 16.04.

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