Ubuntu nightmare!

[similar.squirrel]

Okay. I just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on an old laptop. That was fine. Got installed. Very happy.
But the actual desktop was bigger than the monitor, so it was difficult to close Firefox, for instance.
I decided to alleviate this by changing the resolution, but I managed to set it to such a low one that now I cannot change it back on the GUI.
I'm completely new to Linux and text-based configurations in general, so could anybody tell me how to change the monitor resolution using the terminal?The internet assumes I know a lot of stuff that I actually don't.

Thanks =]

 

[zidine100]

A better place to ask would be the ubuntu forums, just a suggestion.

 

[similar.squirrel]

See, other people have had this prolem, and those forums give advice. That does not make sense.

 

[ctrl-alt-postal]

Ubuntu is buggy.

Try mint, it is a lot more stable.

XFCE mint is a good option for an older machine (xfce is the gui, lighter than gnome)

For all your linux questions, I suggest www.linuxquestions.org.

 

[cleverlymadeup]

I've had problems corresponding to this sort of thing before. As far as I remember, there's a file named "xorg.conf" located in the /etc/X11 directory. First of all, you'll have to kill your current X session. There's a command, init, which is able to do that on some distributions of Linux, but not on Ubuntu.

Anyway, once you've killed X, you have to edit xorg.conf using some sort of command-line text editor, such as Emacs, vi or Nano. Unfortunately, there's nothing that corresponds directly to monitor resolutions, so you'll have to go looking on the internet for details about xorg.conf.

umm yes there is. there's a whole section of the xorg.conf file dedicated to screen resolution. i'm not sure where you got that there's nothing in it for screen resolution, there always has been, since the days of it being just plain X86 instead of the newer xorg

look for something like this

# **********************************************************************
# Screen sections
# **********************************************************************

# Any number of screen sections may be present. Each describes
# the configuration of a single screen. A single specific screen section
# may be specified from the X server command line with the "-screen"
# option.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "bfgnvidia"
Monitor "lglcd"
DefaultDepth 24

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection


look for your DefaultDepth and then change the section that corresponds with that and put in the resolution you want at the front.

 

[TZer0]

Nyeeh.. Ubuntu.. don't bother with the 9.10-version, that's what made me give up Ubuntu.
Before update: everything works perfectly fine.
After update: my wireless network card finds everyone else's network.. just not mine.
(Yes, we tried everything)

 

[number2301]

Terminal > root > rm -rf

It'll set it back to a safe default.

Seriously though, don't do that. And if what I posted didn't set alarm bells ringing do a bit of research before copying and pasting commands.