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I made my break from Windows to Linux in the late 1990's, in part because I disliked the fact that Windows was programmed to act like it knew better than me. You might call me old-fashioned, but when I tell a computer to do something or configure it a certain way, I don't want it to override me — especially when I know I'm right.
Unfortunately, recent versions of Linux (Fedora and Arch distros) have no tool to tell Xorg what resolution monitor I have. They expect users not to know anything, so they rely on Xorg to automatically detect the monitor resolution by communicating with it over the VGA cable. This is a problem, since I have a KVM switch between each of my desktops and my monitor.
The KVM switch communicates with the computer and tells it that the monitor resolution is 1024x768. My actual monitor resolution is 1600x900. Fedora (until release 13) had a tool called system-config-display which allowed a user to override what Xorg detected as the monitor resolution and correctly modify the configuration files accordingly. Now the distributors (in this case Fedora and Arch) treat users like morons who can't be trusted to correctly configure display settings and rely exclusively on Xorg auto-detection.
When I first installed Arch (to get away from other B.S. in Fedora and the rude people on Red Hat's Bugzilla) I was able to manually edit the Xorg configuration file to specify 1600x900 resolution, but with the latest update, even Arch won't accept the correct display settings. Now, I'm stuck with 1152x864 on my main desktop, which in addition to being a lower resolution, is a 4x3 aspect stretched to fit a 16x9 aspect monitor.
Oh, how I long for the days of Tron, when computer programs regarded users as superior to themselves. I guess there are lots of sub-genius programmers out there who can't accept the fact that they don't know as much as they think they know.