[TriLUG] "The Linux Experience" at Dell, a tale of woe and wow. VERY LONG

[Alan Porter]

Douglas A. Whitfield wrote:
> I love my ubuntu Dell laptop, but it had some resolution issues out of the
> box.  I was able to get that fixed, but that broke the video (as in codec
> related).  It's watchable now, but not great.
>   

Some Dell laptops have a known video BIOS problem where X11 can probe 
for available resolution settings, and it fails to report the native LCD 
resolution. So instead, your fancy 1400x1050 display gets stuck showing 
a 1024x768 image. Fortunately, there is a run-time hack called 
"855resolution" that allows you to stuff your own custom values into the 
video BIOS shadow RAM.

If this was your problem, then drop me a line.

Alan