Comment 7 for bug 545397

Made some progress on this.

My initial install of 10.04 beta 1 -- the first Lucid version I tried -- wouldn't do 1920x1200 video with an ATEN CS1734B KVM switch in place. The switch, although it supports monitor resolutions well in excess of this, prevents the detection of some monitor parameters and the display defaults to a lower resolution. This seems to have been the cause of some problems, for me anyway.

Here http://ohioloco.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1435151 there's a reference to the driver being unable to

> identify the correct EDID info,

which reminded me of this.

First time around I ended up installing with a directly connected monitor (hardware drivers installed ok) and then getting xorg.conf configured to use 1920x1200 to eliminate black borders caused by the system seeing a lower resolution display. It was because I was having difficulty getting1920x1200 that I did a clean install with the monitor directly attached.

Once I had the xorg.conf file figured out (or borrowed to be precise; see blog posts) I didn't think I'd need to unplug from the switch again. I thought I could just reuse that xorg.conf file. Wrong! And furthermore, I couldn't install the drivers until after I'd done a system update (not the case last time as far as I remember). Doing it the other way around led to a crash, and this time the drivers were installed automatically after the system update (nice).

http://wombatdiet.net/2010/03/25/first-impressions-ubuntu-10-04/
http://wombatdiet.net/2010/03/19/fedora-12-and-the-aten-cs1734b/

I haven't been able to get xorg.conf adjusted for use with Fedora 12 yet (with a Samsung 2443NW); the Ubuntu config doesn't work.

ATEN have previously blamed my monitor (a different one) for Ubuntu not getting the resolution right, but I now know and I've sent them xorg log files made with and without the switch in place, that what's detected is very different with the switch in use. Until today however, that didn't cause any crashes.

Bottom line is, I think, not to use a KVM switch during installation, just in case.

Message for Canonical: I would gladly give preference to Ubuntu certified hardware.