Widescreen Optimum Use

[Amanda Yilmaz]

john.moniz-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org wrote:
> Hi all;
> 
> I recently bought an LCD monitor for my mother-in-law. She was looking for a square monitor, but all there is nowadays is the widescreen. It's a Samsung 21.5" screen.
> 
> She is using Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (I know, I should upgrade it for her one of these days). With the widescreen, the background picture gets spread out and looks very unnatural. From the settings on the monitor itself, I restricted the screen to a square size. The background looks good, but there's a lot of real estate unnecessarily lost.
> 
> What's the best way to handle a widescreen monitor? I'd be happy with having the background picture cut back to a square, but would like the icons and any open applications to use the full screen.
> 
> I've never heard anyone complain about this before, so it must be something silly I've done or overlooked. 
> 
> Thanks for any help.
> 
> John.

When in widescreen mode, is just the background picture spread out, or
are the desktop icons and text spread out as well?

Conversely, when you manually set the monitor to 4:3 mode, and the
background picture looks OK, are the desktop icons and text squashed
horizontally?

What to do next will depend on the answer to these questions. If the
background picture *and* the desktop icons and text are spread out in
widescreen mode, that indicates a video card configuration issue.

If the background picture is spread out but the desktop icons and text
look fine in widescreen mode, you would just need to change the
background picture display mode (Zoom, Centre, etc.) and/or crop it
and/or choose a different background picture.

Amanda

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