What does it do and how do I invoke it?

What is the "this" that you found? Nobody can comment on it if we don't know what it is.

Also, if you want help with screen resolutions, you need to provide more information.
- Wwhat video card you are using, and what driver?
- What resolution do you currently get, and what other resolutions do you want?
- What monitor do you have? It might also restrict the possible resolutions.

To find the video card (or more importantly the specific graphics chip set) in a terminal, type "lspci | grep VGA" and post the results.

The "This" i refer to on this page is "Ubuntu screen-resolution-extra package" - thats what I hoped i would be asking about on this page. Even finding the right protocol to ask questions is obscure with Linux.

I will expand, I am new to Linux and was surprised to find the best resolution available was 1024x768, surely nobody has a monitor which can only work in this mode these days? I spent all my free time for a week trying to get my fresh install of Ubuntu just to communicate on my network with both a windows xp (easy) and a win 7 (difficult) machine (why does this need to be so hard, trying hundreds of pages of possible solutions from other people struggling for years), Iwas hoping moving away from windows would make life better. So after all that and trying 3 different monitors which were not recognized I was forced back into the 1980s with beard and sandals typing to a terminal screen again. I am a bit dyslexic so this is even harder for me but I persevered and eventually got one more video mode, of course it all went away after a reboot so I then had to type it all again using some primitive in line editor to create a bash bin file. Reboot told me it contained at least one invalid instruction. I resisted the temptation to slit my wrists and attempted to use another editor from the age of steam managing to completely delete the file this time. I couldn't face doing it all again and in the foolish assumption that surely somebody would have written and app to just give me a range of extra video modes (I'd better say screen resolutions) I searched for the linux software and found "Ubuntu screen-resolution-extra package which I downloaded and installed. No new menu items appeared, nothing changed and search though I might I can find no instructions on how to use Ubuntu screen-resolution-extra package or what it (Ubuntu screen-resolution-extra package) might do for me anyway.

Thanks for sticking with Linux. Once you solve this problem (and you surely will, although it may well take more effort than it seems like it should) you will not only have better screen resolution, but you will have learned a lot more about linux.

Back to basics, however - it is critical we know what video card you are using. Once we know that, we can confirm you are using the best available video driver for it.

I don't use that package, but from the description "Extension for the GNOME screen resolution applet." I don't think it will bring you any additional resolutions. I also do not think that typing lots of stuff by hand is what you need. (It might help use to understand more about your problem if you also told us what files you were typing text into, so we might suggest what other applications should be doing that for you.)

So - please let us help you and tell us what video card you have, and what driver it is currently using.

Thank you so much for the friendly reply, it really helps! one of the difficult editors was i thin Vi.

Well first I installed sysinfo but that didn't admit I had any vga so back to typing I installed lshw which warned me I should use sudo but seemed to work anyway reporting VGA compatible controller product RS880 [Radeon HD 4200] driver=radeon latency=0. i don't suppose you need IRQ no. or memory range.

After several other attempts I finally got my one extra screen res setting using cvt to get the parameters then used xrandr newmode. after establishing I was using VGA-0 I put newmode addmode output lines into a bash bin file. It looks like nothing here but it took me a whole evening to research it and make it work.

Thanks again.

I was hoping someone else (maybe who has the same card) might chip in. I don't know if you finally have gotten the resolution you want, but you also haven't said what monitor you are using and what it's native resolution is. However, I do think your initial thoughts were correct - you should be able to get a good resolution (1920 x 1080?) depending on your video card and monitor, without any special software or strange configuration. I use KDE, not Gnome, so I can't tell you what the normal system settings application you should use or what window or tab in it, but you are correct that you should not need to specify anything about IRQ or memory range for the driver.

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.

"without activity for the last 15 days" ??? my last post was three days ago. If comments don't count as activity, please change the wording the janitor uses to be more meaningful.