Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Gets An XRandR GUI

A week ago, Canonical's Bryce Harrington had pushed an XRandR GUI into Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which can now be found inside Alpha 6. This utility facilitates the dynamic management of displays using the RandR 1.2 extension, which is similar to URandR, GRandR, and other RandR front-ends. This new package has caught our attention and led us to explore its capabilities for display management.

This "Monitor Resolution Settings" panel wasn't written specifically for Ubuntu, but was created for GNOME by Soren Sandmann, a Red Hat developer. This utility can be accessed by entering the GNOME Control Center (gnome-control-center) and clicking "Screen Resolution" within the hardware section.

This isn't the first monitor management utility for GNOME, but found in earlier versions of Ubuntu (and other distributions using GNOME) was the "Screen Resolution Preferences" that just consisted of three drop-down menus for the resolution, refresh rate, and rotation. It's quite primitive by today's standards with both desktop and notebook users being able to enable new display devices on-the-fly thanks to most drivers now supporting the Resize and Rotate v1.2 extension.