I recently had a need to install Ubuntu to a physical box (I know what a concept!) and I connect it remotely using VNC Viewer from RealVNC. One thing I noticed was how poor the screen resolution was on my 27″ wide-screen. I assumed I’d just need to crank up the resolution relative to my screens capabilities. The trouble was that there were only 3 resolution modes available.
1024×768 (4:3)
800×600 (4:3)
848×480 (16:9)
I must admit my first thought was perhaps this was an issue with my graphic controller not being discovered. Actually, it turns out that Ubuntu doesn’t ship with many resolution modes.
To add additional resolution modes open a terminal………
1.) Type the command to retrieve the display mode:
xrandr
This should give us an output like so:
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 4096 x 4096
VGA-1 connected primary 1024×768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm
1024×768 60.00*
800×600 60.32 56.25
848×480 60.00
640×480 59.94
Make a note of the video type in this case VGA-1.
2.) Next, we need to retrieve the configuration settings for creating a new resolution mode for example 1920×1080:
cvt 1920 1080
This should give us an output like so:
# 1920×1080 59.96 Hz (CVT 2.07M9) hsync: 67.16 kHz; pclk: 173.00 MHz
Modeline “1920x1080_60.00” 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
3.) Next, we can use xrandr to define the parameters of a new display mode, copying and pasting the parameters retrieved from the cvt command:
sudo xrandr –newmode “1920x1080_60.00” 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync
4.) Finally, we can use xrandr to add and activate the newly created mode:
sudo xrandr –addmode VGA-1 “1920x1080_60.00”
RESULT!
