Comment 1 for bug 68654

Ubuntu has bad default resolution choosing algorithm for CRT monitors. It's not related just to Samsung monitors - I've noticed the same situation (when Ubuntu chooses too high resolution, for example 1920x1440 or even 2048x1536 resolution on 17" or 1600x1200 on 15'' high quality CRT monitors) several times.

Now xresprobe utility simply chooses second from the highest mode from modes, which CRT monitor supports and if CRT monitor can work on very high resolutions then too high resolution is chosen as default. Because of this, menus and other texts are almost unreadable and monitor causes damage to the eyes, because of very small fonts and too low refresh rate (60 Hz) :(

It's a nonsense, because now Ubuntu spoils the eyes for users of high or medium quality CRT monitors by default:(

I will show you example with a high quality 17" CRT monitor, which horizontal freq is 30-96 kHz and refresh rate is 50-160 Hz.
xresprobe output (when XRESPROBE_DEBUG is set) looks like this:

laptop: ; ddc: yes
attempting DDC detection
raw timings - 2048x1536 1920x1440 1600x1200 1280x1024 1280x1024 1024x768 1024x768 1024x768 1024x768 1024x768 1024x768 832x624 800x600 800x600 800x600 800x600 800x600 720x400 720x400 640x480 640x480 640x480 640x480 640x480 640x480
id: SyncMaster
res: 1920x1440 1600x1200 1280x1024 1024x768 832x624 800x600 720x400 640x480
freq: 30-96 50-160
disptype: crt

So, as you see default resolution was set to 1920x1440 on 17'' CRT, which is a total nonsense, because fonts are very very small (so small, that user simply can't find how to change resolution - menu items in system menu are unreadable) and refresh rate is only 60 Hz:

$ ddcprobe |grep 1920x1440
ctiming: 1920x1440@60

Problem is, that ubuntu developers don't want to change default resolution choosing algorithm for CRT displays - there are lots of bugreports about too high default resolution and too low refresh rate, but it seems ubuntu developers don't wanna hear this - look at commens in bug #12829 for example.

ddcprobe command does provide monitor size - for 17" CRT:

$ ddcprobe |grep size
screensize: 32 24

Because we can know CRT size, we can simply limit max resolution to one, which can make sense (for example on 19" CRT's max should be 1920x1440, on 17" - 1600x1200, on 15" and 14" - 1280x1024) and never choose default resolution higher than this.

Btw, I think this bug isn't a duplicate of #12829 - I think this bug is about a patch for xresprobe to care about screensize (look above) and limit default resolution for CRT monitors according to screensize.

Btw2, manufacturers recommend to use 1024x768 or 1280x1024 on this high quality 17" CRT monitor(see http://monitor.samsung.de/article.asp?artid=5264C7DC-A9FB-4E84-835D-E1B14BD6BD6D&show=specs), so, limiting 17" monitors to 1600x1200 is really comfortable for majority of users.
If Ubuntu developers agree I can provide a patch for ddcprobe.sh script to care about screensize.