[ltp] Weird pixel width on t520 running ubuntu 10.4 LTS

[Steven J. Owens]

Hi,

     I have a t520 with nvidia/optimus, and I'm running Ubuntu 10.4
LTS.  So far it's been pretty much okay (*), but the resolution is
funky/weird.  Images appear to be sort of squashed, or perhaps rather
stretched horizontally, as if my pixels are particularly wide.  Anybody
know what to do to fix this?

     I can't find anything on in google (perhaps all I need are some
suggestions on the right keywords).  I've tried installing the
nvidia-current package, but that doesn't appear to change anything; in
fact, when I go to Preferences/Monitors, I get this pop-up:

"It appears your graphics driver does not support
 the necessary extensions to use this tool.  Do you
 want to use your graphics driver vendor's tool 
 instead?"

     If I click no, I get the standard ubuntu resolution dialog with
"Unknown" in the screen graphic and a single option in the resolution
(1280x1024) and refresh rate (61 Hz) dropdowns.

     If I click yes, I get an "NVIDIA X Server Settings" dialog, and
this popup:

"You do not appear to be using the NVIDIA X driver.  
 Please edit your X configuration file (just run "nvidia-
 xconfig" as root), and restart the X server."

     I've done "sudo nvidia-xconfig" but I still get the same
resolution and the same popup.  Meanwhile the dialog doesn't let
me do anything with resolution or refresh rate, it just offers me
checkboxes for:
     
     Enable ToolTips
     Display Status Bar
     Slider Text Entries
     Include X Display Names in the Config file
     Show "Really quit?" Dialog


(* Besides resolution, he other two problems I've seen are:
a) suspend-to--ram doesn't appear to work, 
b) the speakers are so wimpy that I thought I must have something set
   wrong, but it appears they're just lame.)

-- 
Steven J. Owens
puff@darksleep.com / (412) 401-8060 cell 
| "I'm going to make broad, sweeping generalizations and strong,
|  declarative statements, because otherwise I'll be here all night and
|  this document will be four times longer and much less fun to read.
|  Take it all with a grain of salt." 
|  - http://darksleep.com/notablog