Installing an nvidia card would be the easiest.  You can download the 
nvidia driver and install it and it will guide you through setting the 
widescreen up.  The downside of loading an nvidia driver is that you have 
to reinstall it after a kernel upgrade which happens if automatic updates 
are enabled.  You could exclude kernel upgrades (might be the default) but 
that's probably not a good idea.

You might be able to do it without an nvidia driver.  I've found that the 
nv driver which is part of the stock distribution does support these 
non-standard dimensions.  They are not turned on by default but if the 
server indicates they are supported, then you can turn them on manually. 
You can find this out by looking at the X.org.log output when you start 
the X server.  See if it is using the nv driver.  Then, look for 
non-standard supported modes in the log.  It should provide a modeline for 
these non-standard dimensions.  A modeline looks something like this:

Modeline "1280x960"   84.96  1280 1472 1512 1600  960 1052 1053 1062

In general, you can run a monitor at any dimension.  10 or more years ago,
when support for X11 video was still in its infancy, there was documentation
on how to tune the video to do this.  But, with improved support, this sort
of arcane know-how is slowly disappearing.  You might try TLDP if you want
to go down this road.





On Tue, 12 Dec 2006, Nathan Moore wrote:

> I've got a AMD box running SL 43 with a graphics adaptor integrated on the 
> mainboard.  I'm currently trying to use a Samsung widescreen LCD panel 
> (941BW) with the machine.  The LCD panel has native resolution of 1440 x 900. 
> So far as I can tell, the version of Xorg that came with SL 43 doesn't have 
> that resolution as a predefined choice.  I know nothing of linux video 
> drivers, and ask:
>
> (1) The box uses and integrated "VESA" driver to drive the "D-sub"/vga port. 
> The LCD panel  has both digital and vga/analog/d-sub cables.  Would I be 
> better off buying a cheap Nvidia video card with a digital out and connecting 
> that to the display?
>
> (2) I can't seem to get x11 to display with a desktop size of 1440 x 900. 
> Can I change this through a config file?
>
> (3) My specific Samsung display, model "SyncMaster 941BW", isn't listed as an 
> option in the system-config-display program.  Are there vast differences 
> between the "generic LCD w/ 1440 x 900" setting and another setting tailored 
> for my display?
>
> regards,
>
> NT Moore
>
>
> - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> Nathan Moore
> Physics
> Winona State University
> AIM:nmoorewsu
>