Using read-edid to extract useful information on PnP Monitor on Ubuntu or Linux Mint

Read-edid utility is a useful tool to help you  extract useful information on PnP Monitor.

According to the read-edid website, if you can't find the data to set your monitor up under XFree86, then read-edid is for you; it should auto detect all necessary info and should even provide a few modes with better refresh rates/resolutions than the standard VESA ones. However, as of now it won't do everything for you; you'll have to edit XF86Config yourself.

To install read-edid utility in Ubuntu or Linux Mint, just do a
# aptitude install read-edid OR
# apt-get install read-edid


The  data obtained by get-edid is in a binary format, so the parse-edid command is available to interpret  it  and  generate  a  human-readable block  of  text  information  that  can  also be included in an XFree86 XF86Config file. It is customary  to  invoke  get-edid  and  parse-edid  together  in  a pipeline.
# get-edid | parse-edid


More information:

1. Get-edid Website

Ubuntu History

Quite often, applications or websites uses the Ubuntu version name instead of the version number which I'm more uses too.

The following URL Ubuntu Version History is an useful list of all the corresponding Ubuntu version name with its number