New Laptop help desired

[Matrix Mole]

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I don't have any specific answers directly, but I've got some
suggestions and I figure those can be just as helpful if they give a new
starting point on where to look for the answers. Comments inline below:

| First the laptop has a 17" WXGA screen. It has a resolution of 1440x900.
| When Ubuntu is displayed on the desktop the tool bars only cover about
| 75% the width of the screen, though if a program is opened it covers the
| entire screen.

I'd say if the programs use the entire wide screen display, then it may
be a option within the window manager itself. I'm guessing it's gnome as
that's the standard on ubuntu (unless using k/x-ubunt) iirc. You might
want to look into the bar layout and configuration options inside the
gui itself. There may be some option to take advantage of the wide
screen display for the bars.

| My second issue is that I have no sound. I have read in the forums that
| I possibly need to reconfigure the alsa drivers. I have attempted to do
| so based on the Ubuntu forum recommendation but no luck I get errors
| when attempting to compile and do a make install.

With the sound, i'm not really sure what to say. Maybe if you posted
some of the error messages others may have some ideas or suggestions on
how to go about resolving the issue. Most of the times I've seen ubuntu
or other distro's installed the sound has worked out of the box.

Matrix Mole
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