I upgraded my home workstation to Ubuntu 8.10 the other day. I was kind of worried that this would cause trouble with my X Window System setup. I’ve had major trouble with my Samsung Syncmaster 204b before, with its faulty DVI implementation being the major source of trouble.

My worries were well justified - no image on DVI after reboot. Tried connecting it via VGA, and that kind of worked - a slight fuzziness, which almost went away after pressing the auto-adjust button on the monitor.

I got tired of the monitor and decided to go for a new one - so I ordered a Benq FP241W 24” WIDE TFT. It’s using the less common MVA display technology instead of the more common TN. This is supposed to mean that it’s colours and viewing angle are superior to standard panel.

Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I might be able to stand a slight fuzziness on my 20” samsung if using it as a secondary panel in a dualhead setup. So, when the new panel arrived, I connected the 20” Samsung via VGA, and the new monitor via DVI.

With my usual luck, I got the same problems with the new panel as with the old one - problems syncing the DVI signal, with the result being that the panel went black.

However, after switching from the open source ATI driver to the proprietary fglrx driver, things started working, and using amdcccle, the ATI driver control program, setting up dualhead was really easy.

The result - a resolution of 3840x1200 at home. That’s even slightly better than at work, where Opera Software have equipped me with a 19”+24” combo.

I’m not looking forward to the next Ubuntu upgrade, though. Sometimes, I just hate the X window system.