I'm new to Ubuntu. I've 'dabbled' in the past but Windows was annoying me too much so I finally made the change.

One thing I use my laptop for is outputting the screen onto an external monitor.

In Windows this usually works fine (but when there is an issue, it's a pain to resolve and has crashed my computer on many occasions). In Ubuntu it's a very simple case of "plug and play" because it displays the content immediately with no major problems.

However, I can only alter the resolution of the external display to 4:3 formats, whereas the external monitor is 16:9, so the picture is stretched. In Windows there's loads of resolutions to choose from.

If I disable the laptop's screen, it still doesn't allow me to display the correct resolution externally (on VGA).

Further to that, if I close the laptop it keeps the external screen as it is, but when I reopen the laptop, the laptop screen doesn't turn back on until I restart.

If it's a video I am watching, I can use VLC to alter the aspect ratio so the video looks fine, but it's quite an annoying work around.

I used terminal to find my graphics controller, which is "Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)" (not great, I know... the laptop was a free gift with my mobile!)

Any idea of how I can get the resolution on the external monitor to be correct?