"Screens and Graphics" controls never save resolution or refresh rate settings (and is redundant with "Screen Resolution" controls)

[Jordan Erickson]

I have noticed that on 3 different Ubuntu Gutsy installs on differing hardware (all of them various ATI Radeon video adapters, though), the new "System -> Administration -> Screens and Graphics" controls seem to never save either the screen resolution or refresh rate.

My most current experience with this was last night at a friend's house, shortly after he installed Gutsy (new install). He has an ATI Radeon 9800 and a Dell P1110 CRT - he was confused that his refresh rate was not "sticking" upon logout (after using "Screens and Graphics"). He tried this with both the default ATI driver and the proprietary ATI driver from the website (the "Restricted driver" didn't launch X at all). He prefers 1024x768 @75Hz, which he set, multiple times in "Screens and Graphics" - but upon logout/login, it reverts to 1024x768 @60Hz. He was able to make changes stick via "System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution".

This should be filed as both a bug for "Screens and Graphics" as well as counter-intuitive that both "Screen Resolution" and "Screens and Graphics" exist in a default Gutsy install. How's a user to know which one to change, and which one works?

Thanks!

[Colan Schwartz (colan)]

There's already a ticket for the save issue, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/displayconfig-gtk/+bug/150915. How about reworking this ticket so that it's just about redundancy?

My understanding is that "Screens and Graphics" is for administrators while "Screen Resolution" is for regular users. Couldn't an administrator set up a bunch of available resolutions so that each user could pick one?

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Thank you for reporting this bug and for your efforts to make
Ubuntu better. As Xorg has improved this past year, an unfortunate side
effect of these improvements is that it has rendered several design
assumptions in displayconfig-gtk obsolete. So, starting with Hardy we
are no longer putting displayconfig-gtk forth as a primary configuration
tool, and are putting our development focus into the Screen Resolution
applet. As a result, we do not plan to fix this bug and thus are closing
it.

For more background on this change, please see this page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/DisplayConfigGtk