In Ubuntu, fixing the screen resolution is very easy., because the menu system adopted by Ubuntu is straight-foward. On the left side of the top toolbar, you find System, and under System you find Preferences, and under Preferences you find Screen Resolution. We normally indicate this by writing System/Preferences/Screen Resolution. Like Windows, you get to try out a resolution first. Unlike Windows, you can also set the scan rate for your monitor. This can be important with CRT monitors, since it controls the width and position of the screen image. On my CRT, I found through several efforts that 800x600 at 82Hz is best for me.
You can manually make changes via configuration files, as you attempted to do, but that's like modifying INI files or changing the Registry in Windows. It's usually best not to, unless you know what you are doing or are following detailed instructions.
The problem with Linux, in part, is that it is a smaller community and has fewer resources to draw upon. But at the same time, if you know how to state your problem for a search engine, you can usually find useful information to guide you.
Take the matter of using a terminal console in Linux. This is pretty much like using Start/Run under Windows, then typing cmd and hitting Enter. That is not intuitive, yet it is something you learn to do. So you learn that under Applications/Accessories, you have Terminal. And when Terminal opens up, you will often type sudo -s and hit Enter to switch to the superuser mode. Just something to remember.
People use Windows with no formal training at all. That's because there is a lot of point and click involved. But often they have to get someone to show then how to do certain things, like move files, or compose and send their first email, or how to get on to the internet. You learn a bit here, you experiment a bit there, and as time goes on, it gets easier and seems more natural.
When you switch to Linux, you are repeating the same process, but now you have to compare what you can't do (yet) under Linux with what seems to natural and easy to do under Windows. That doesn't make you stupid or slow to learn, it just means you can't get so impatient that you give up. Believe me, you will learn Linux a lot faster than you first learned Windows, because there are many similarities and you already know most of the capabilities that you want to master.
As I said before, most things you are told to do in Linux are in terms of terminal console operations, what we commonly refer to as command line access. Thjis is a curse to people that don't type, or have difficulty comprehending nongraphical information. But it is precise, and easy to use, so even complex tasks can be reduced to a few statements.
The problem is, that if there are any decision points involved, a few statements may be inadequate because they do not tell you what decisions to make, or what options have to be considered. It helps then to keep looking for other examples and choices made, because in this way you can become aware of those options and the influence they may have.
My posts attempt to perform a service, in that they are somewhat detailed, pointing to sites and postings that I found helpful, then give you the blow-by-blow results of my efforts. Where I can, I try to give good sources. But it is a trial-and-error process, and since my hardware is different from yours, and my needs and objectives are not the same as yours, then my results may be different as well.
How much detail do you need? For instance, I could start off saying that you should get the current version of Ubuntu and burn the image to disk. But if you have a slow internet connection, that might not be a real option for you. You could probably buy a CD with it already on there and go that way instead. So any discussion about downloading files vial HTTP or FTP, then using a software package like Nero or a free CD burning program that can be had from many sources would be wasted, especially if you already know how to do these things, or don't currently have a CD burner that you can use.
Then I could tell you to either install Linuix in place of Windows, or set up another partiton and install it to that and elect to configure it for dual booting. These are choices that you have to make, and the amount of drive space, your experience with repartitioning hard drives and installing new software all come into play. I chose to use the NTLoader (Windows) for my primary boot process, but someone else might choose to use GRUB or a third party boot manager instead. More than likely you will have to resort to an editor to make changes to boot.ini (windows) or menu.lst (GRUB) to get the boot process down exactly the way you want (cut the timeout from 30 seconds to perhaps 3 or 5, rename the boot link so that you will know what your boot choices are).
It's just not possible to be overly detailed, but if you bother to read through my many posts on this subject, I have tried to explain my choices, why I made them, and tell you enough to put you somewhere down the road towards doing it yourself. If you are not a do-it-yourselfer, then this is possibly something you should not attempt.
I have scrapped projects or done them again and again in an effort to get things the way I want, so it is not always possible to just get there without a struggle.
I spent about 5 months at one point in my career creating a universal configuration for a PC that encompassed every task and position-specific application that an operational control center needed, and creating a menu system to boot into whichever mode was required at that point in time. It was rough, because we are talking about 386s with 256 MB of RAM and 2 GB hard drives, and these had to encompass DOS, OS/2, Windows98, and Linux OSes as well as certain custom applications. I would make a bit of process, have to create new images several times a day to capture the gains I made, and if the machine became unstable and crashed (a common occurance), I would have to go back to the last good image and resume my efforts.
I finally got it finished, and it was rock solid. I then restored that image on every PC in the center, and from then on, operators could work from any position at any task as needed, and if a PC crashed, they could just move to another one and keep working. Every PC served as a backup for every other PC, and I had one image for all (multiple copies of course). We could no longer be impacted by the loss of one or two PCs, and people found that the new configuration allowed them great flexibility in where they sat and how they did their jobs. I also only had to update one PC, make a new image, then use that image to restore every other PC to the same configuration. This was much faster than updating each PC individually, especially since I could have several PCs being restored from backups at the same time.
But the thing is, that was an isolated case, where all the PCs were physically the same, and all the possible uses were understood and incorporated together. That's certainly not the case today, and the closest you are going to come to that is to confine yourself to a small segment of the market. For instance, instead of picking just any distro of Linux to use, you instead try to get one that is as mainstream as they come, and where you can find lots of supporting posts on related forums. That just makes it easier for starters. And it is a good reason for picking Ubuntu.
