Broken Ubuntu 10.10

I have just upgraded my desktop to Ubuntu 10.10 after I have tried it on my laptop. Unfortunately, it wasn't that smooth this time. It seems the nVidia driver for my GeForce MX card is very broken in the new version. I do manage to get the graphical interface back after using the generic driver rather than the propriety driver.

Since I am using a KVM switch, the DPMS didn't quite get detected properly and I were left with this nasty 1024x768@60Hz resolution. One thing that I had kept complaining is how nasty of Linux to configure simple thing as resolution. After a few search, I finally found this blog which describes the use of xrandr to set a custom resolution. After a few attempt, I finally get my 1152x864@70Hz resolution back. Here is the link to the blog if you have a similar problem. Good luck!

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-change-display-resolution-settings-using-xrandr.html

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution

By the way, here are the commands I used.

1. cvt 1152 864 75


2. xrandr --newmode "1152x864_70.00" 96.75 1152 1224 1344 1536 864 867 871 902 -hsync +vsync


3. xrandr --verbose --addmode VGA-1 "1152x864_70.00"


4. xrandr --output VGA-1 --mode "1152x864_70.00"

The changes above is temporary, to make it permanent, you have two options:

1) store these lines onto a file called ~/.xprofile on your home directory to make them permanent for a particular user

2) Modify the /etc/gdm/Init/Default file, and add the lines after right after the

PATH=/usr/bin:$PATH

OLD_IFS=$IFS

p.s. instead of adding the lines directly to the Default file, I chose to create a CustomResolution file with permission sets to 555 , and placed this file in my /usr/local/sbin folder, and called this file from the Default.