I have an LCD monitor that works well except for one thing. There is a 1/2" band at the bottom that is badly distorted and unusable. I am working with Linux and X11 to try to create a display that shrinks the desktop to fit the remaining good area. Some monitors have a control to reduce the vertical size, but this one does not. I need to know how to setup X11 to work in the usable area only. HELP!

Which version of Linux are you running? Typically if you right click on the desktop and go to properties you will find the display properties. Also another place to look is /etc/X11/x11.conf or xorg.conf

Thanks for the response. The problem is not how to change the resolution. I need to reduce the screen real estate to exclude the bad band of pixels at the bottom. I've tried several Linux distros and several window managers. All efforts have failed to solve the problem. It seems that there is something that stretches any resolution I choose to the edges of the screen, regardless of my settings. I need a way to force the screen resolution. [Modified by: b75025 on August 27, 2008 06:09 PM] [Modified by: b75025 on August 27, 2008 06:11 PM]

There is a tool called "xvidtune" that allowed you to resize and/or move the image displayed on the monitor, but it is intended for CRTs. If your LCD is NOT connected via DVI or other digital interface, then xvidtune may do what you want.

try holding down ctrl +left click mouse hold and move page where ever u whont

b75025, I know it is a workaround, but you might also try creating a panel at the bottom edge of the screen and leaving it empty (ie, no applets and menus). That will prevent any windows from occupying (even partially) the problematic bottom of the screen, which could at least keep the important content out of the bad zone. I'd say to set the background color of the panel to black to prevent anything from being _drawn_ on the screen, too ... but of course whether that is successful depends on the nature of the video signal distortion. Yes, it's a punt, but in the short term it shouldn't hurt, either. Nate