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I am running Ubuntu and Linux Mint in VMWare. In the display settings, none of the 16:9 aspect ratio resolutions are available, including the commonly used 1920x1080 resolution. How can I enable this?

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up vote 26 down vote

Enter the following commands in a terminal to enable 1920x1080 resolution:

xrandr --newmode "1920x1080"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
xrandr --addmode Virtual1 1920x1080
xrandr --output Virtual1 --mode 1920x1080

This will set your display resolution to 1920x1080 and also enable several other 16:9 aspect ratio resolutions in the display settings.

Remember that you may have to enable full screen mode in VMWare before these resolutions become selectable.

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I was having this problem and found the solution on this webpage: techsfo.com/blog/2013/07/1920x1080-ubuntu-vmware I'm sharing this question and answer because it seems to be a frequent problem experienced by people running any kind of Linux distribution in a virtual machine. I really don't understand how the command works, so if someone would be willing to explain what the various numbers mean (besides the obvious resolution dimensions) that would be most welcome. – InvalidBrainException May 25 '14 at 5:19
    
Hi Brain, what should be done for 1366x768 resolution ? – Rajasekhar Feb 5 '15 at 6:39
3  
Worth noting that you should identify your display first, using xrandr. Mine is VBOX0 instead of Virtual1. – Tass May 4 '15 at 20:56
    
It worked! I could kiss you :) – Manu Oct 4 '15 at 11:08
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Oh. It goes back to a small resolution after a restart :( – Manu Oct 4 '15 at 11:24
up vote 1 down vote

@InvalidBrainException's answer is perfect. In addition, in order to it make it permanent and prevent running commands on each restart, you can write the following configs into file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-monitor.conf:

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "Virtual1"
    Modeline "p1920x1080"  173.00  1920 2048 2248 2576  1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
    Option "PreferredMode" "p1920x1080"
EndSection
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If you need to improve on it, it isn’t perfect, is it?    :-)    ⁠ – G-Man Oct 3 '17 at 21:44
up vote -1 down vote

You can take the script from InvalidBrainException and...

  • create a 1920x1080.sh file
  • make it executable
  • add it as a startup script so that it is run on system startup

Otherwise you'll have to run these lines after each startup manually.

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