LM14 incorrect aspect ratio

[yonnie]

Just installed LM14 mate onto a Shuttle X. Replacing Debian Etch. The detected monitor comes up as unknown and the resolution had the righthand controls on windows off the screen, 1280 x 1024. All screens appear stretched. If I select 1024 x 768, the various screens seem to fit onto monitor, but still appear stretched. Very difficult to do publishing while guessing what the end product is going to look like.

The control center only gives a selection of 4 settings for resolution and no manual adjustments. Is there another location to massage settings until things look right?

[viking777]

Unfortunately the display settings are fairly limited. In the continuing efforts to make Linux more automated, they never fail to make it more difficult to use if the automated settings don't work.

I fell into a similar problem on another distro recently and I solved by installing and using arandr. This is a gui for xrandr, but much easier to use than the cli tool. The other option will depend on what kind of graphics you have. For example nvidia-settings is brilliant if you have nvidia graphics, but not much use otherwise .

Arandr works on pretty well everything though, so it might be worth a try. You can get it from the package manager.

[igor83]

Just installed LM14 mate onto a Shuttle X. Replacing Debian Etch. The detected monitor comes up as unknown and the resolution had the righthand controls on windows off the screen, 1280 x 1024. All screens appear stretched. If I select 1024 x 768, the various screens seem to fit onto monitor, but still appear stretched. Very difficult to do publishing while guessing what the end product is going to look like.

The control center only gives a selection of 4 settings for resolution and no manual adjustments. Is there another location to massage settings until things look right?

I've become an evangelist for the Arch Linux documentation on configuring xorg.conf and ATI's driver. Not sure whether Shuttle X uses an ATI video driver, but the documentation explains how to configure the monitor resolution, which helped me out. If you don't run ATI stuff then just pay attention to the X section. Trust me, it's gold.