Comment 8 for bug 255561

This problem is in fact a severe usability problem - basically it makes Ubuntu essentially unusable for all but skilled computer geeks on the affected systems.

I can spend hours upon hours tracking this bug down, trying to see if my hand-edited xorg.conf file's directives will be overridden by the new software's constraints, or I can install another distro, which is known to work on my hardware.

I have to balance my current familiarity with Ubuntu's configuration files (at least as of 6.06), against unfamiliarity with, say, Gentoo or the lastest Fedora, and the time it will take to backup and re-create web sites and databases, etc. I'm inclined to take the latter route.

Ubuntu should at least create a better GUI configurator which will allow (gasp!) the user to specify screen scan rates and so on, when the automatic configuration fails to create a reasonable configuration.

Here's an interesting article:

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/08/04/why_free_software_usability_tends_to_suck.html