My Little Ubuntu Guide

It was easier than ever to get my Ubuntu Hardy system up and configured. Compiz Fusion installs flawlessly and with no tweaking. ATI drivers and the Wireless drivers also were a breeze to install. The only real “tweak” I had to make for my ATI video to work properly was to add a line in my xorg.conf file that specified resolutions.

The reason I had to do this was I’m using an external display to extend my desktop to. In Ubuntu with ATI drivers this is done with a feature called “Big Desktop”. Big Desktop takes the width of both displays and adds them together to create one big width which it then distributes across both monitors…much the same way Windows XP/Vista would do.

It then takes the highest compatible vertical resolution it knows about and makes that the vertical resolution for the “big desktop”. But, on my Dell Inspiron 6400 my highest resolution is 1280×800. My external display goes to 1280×1024. To make things work without distorted graphics on the external display, I simply added the line in my xorg.conf file to allow for the larger resolution. The result is that ATI uses the highest compatible vertical resolution for the external, and still allows the Laptop display to keep it’s 1280×800.

The catch is if I drag my mouse from the external across to the Laptop display while down below the 800 resolution mark, it still goes across and is just down where I can’t see it…I simply bring it up on the laptop to see it again. Windows XP/Vista blocks this from occuring…so that’s the difference, which is no big deal for me because I’m used to it now.

I’ll update this site with some scripts and guides for all this stuff soon. Including a guide to use your Cell phone as a Bluetooth modem!

Talk soon,

John