Contributor Afkpuz

One of the very frustrating things to me is trying to control my resolution and refresh rate. On my generic auto-detected monitor, the wrong resolution is detected. So, to change, I goto screen and graphics (which for some reason was hidden in hardy). Here, I find that I can't actually change anything here. No different choices for resolution are given, nor for the refresh rate. So, I goto tell ubuntu about my monitor. I'm met with a very long list of options which must be searched through for my specific monitor type pair with resolution. The effectiveness of screens and graphics seems to be based on whether your monitor can be properly detected.

I think that there should be a much easier GUI for manually changing resolution and refresh rate. Obviously, you gotta be careful as to not make your monitor blow up! But I think screens and graphics could be cleaned up.


Here are some changes I think would help

1.) Don't display every monitor possibility in one list.

I'm thinking drop down boxes would be much better than a list with 50 choices. So, there could be a drop down box for monitor type (CRT, LCD, Plasma), for max resolution, color depth, screen number, and refresh rate. For resolution, the choices could change based on what you choose for widescreen vs. standard. There would need to be a warning about refresh rate changing, or some kind of safety net built into choosing refresh rate.



2.) Provide other optional choices that would help xorg handle you monitor better

There could be several other optional options that are found in a perfectly-detected-monitor xorg.conf. I'm basing this off of options I've seen within xorg.conf

*Physical size of the screen, orientation of screen (for secondary monitors), horizontal refresh

[....]

In Hardy Heron, it is very difficult to change the default DVD player. This did not used to be the case. In gutsy, there was an option in the system menu to enter any command you wanted to open dvds. This option needs to be brought back and be made easy to use. so, if I install a player from the repos, it should be easily picked from a list, or customizable with a command. Ubuntu should never regress!

If you have a TV attached to your computer/video card via an S-Video cable, you probably noticed the max resolution that S-Video can output to a TV is 1024x768. This works great for people who have monitors that are running at the same resolution in Clone Mode. But if you have a monitor that has a much higher native resolution that your TV, clone mode becomes a joke because it can't show you the whole desktop.

How many people use their TV as an actual monitor instead of a TV? I don't, and I'd bet most people just use it to watch motion video, and could care less about much else.

IDEA: When you play a video with VLC, or any other media player, it should export a duplicate video stream to the TV at full screen right off the bat, independent of the actual media player window the video is contained in. You could even minimize the video to your task bar, continue with your work, while the video going to the TV remains at full screen.

And of course, this could just be an added feature people could choose to use or not. Because I know there are some people out there with HDMI instead of S-Video and probably do use their TV for some form of production work. But for people with S-Video, it's just not practical to use your TV as a computer monitor and you'll get more use out of it if you can watch video at fullscreen without having to change your screen resolution on your monitor back to 1024x768. And if you can watch video on your TV separate from your actual monitor, you can continue to use your computer for other things.