Nothing more frustrating than installing a new OS, only to find that it is not working as expected. Hey, it happens. In a recent instance, a Lockergnome reader had installed Ubuntu onto his Acer Aspire 4520. As luck would have it, the default resolution is ridiculously at something like 640*480 - obviously not usable. He is shooting for a resolution of 1280*720. Clearly, he has a ways to go.

Now there are a number of ways of fixing this. Assuming the specs I found on the computer are right, that it is using an integrated NVIDIA video chipset, one could likely use the restricted driver manager to gain a driver that is going to provide *vastly* better resolution options than the default NV driver.

Being as I have never had anything but trouble with the restricted driver manager, I have always used the Envy tool on Ubuntu PCs…even before there was a restricted driver manager. While your mileage may vary, it has yet to fail me on roughly seven different NVIDIA cards.

Once you follow the instructions carefully, rebooted, etc, then you are ready to see if the resolution has corrected itself. Chances are pretty good that you will end up with something like 1280*XXX after your installation and reboot. If not, open a terminal, type in gksudo nvidia-settings and carefully correct the resolution.