There's a lot of us point and click type people it's one heck of a lot
easier and you can begin to understand how things work rather than
this CLI nonsense

Here's an excellent tutorial which we need more of.
video.google.co.uk/videoplay+pope
http://preview.tinyurl.com/32czg9
It only briefly mentions changing screen resoloutions and I think you
may have to speak with a friendly Linux user who speaks plain english
to help you which seems to be a devil of a job to find :o(

Anyway I hope you get it sorted I'm sure it can be done fairly simply
but I know it's very very frustrating