Re:We need to get hardware going autmagically (Score 1)

I agree. I had the same problem w/ resolution with Kubuntu and so I ran dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg and used the autodetect features. After restarting the machine I couldn't get past the KDE login screen (kept flashing colors, then going black & resetting itself to 1024x768). So I hand-edited the xorg.conf file to mess with the modes and set the default color depth to 24 instead of 16 and now my KDE is happily running at 1280x1024.

How many "ordinary" Windows users are able to take such measures just to get a decent desktop resolution? Not many, I'd think.