Fixing Your Ubuntu Resolution (VirtualBox)

Hey guys, this is Bad Kids on with a video on how to increase your screen resolution in Ubuntu running on VirtualBox because, um, in VirtualBox, if you've installed Ubuntu, you might notice that when you want to resize the window, the actual screen doesn't get any bigger. If you know, the Preferences arm screen resolution right here, it actually doesn't go any higher than this. If you go to the Preferences, this is the highest that it can go.

So that's kind of annoying because when you open windows that are longer than the screen, you can't use them. You have this nice big screen, probably on your Mac; you want to be able to have a bigger Ubuntu screen. So I'm just going to be showing you how to turn up your Ubuntu resolution.

Ok, so first of all, you have to be in Ubuntu and you have to press Control + Option or Alt + F1 to enter this command. You can also just open up Terminal, but it won't work properly. So, it says login. Type your username and your password, and you have to be an administrator who wants you to do this.

Now that you're on this console, you type sudo space SVU and now you're logged in as root. So now all you have to do is type nano space /etc/x11/xorg.conf. Okay, and now you're editing this file. So scroll down to the part where you see something that says screen.

So now, after the line that says device, we're going to add this little bit of information. We're going to type default depth — this is case sensitive, by the way — tab 24, just like that. Ok, now we'll hit enter. Now, we're going to type subsection space "Display", close quote. Now, we're going to hit enter. Now we're inside of here, we're going to type in depth tab 24 and modes tab "1024x768".

Okay, now close quote and then we remain enter and we're going to type end subsection. So it should look just like this. I'll just zoom in there, right here. Okay, so that's all we had to add: five lines of code to this one file.

Okay, so now we're going to press CTRL + X, Y, Enter. So now we're going to type killall gdm and hit enter. Now we're going to type gdm, hit enter, and now our GUI program is going to come up. Our GUI is going to be back up and there you go, and now you have to log in.

Now you'll notice that this still hasn't correctly configured our screen resolution, and that's because we have to do one thing that we haven't done yet, and that's insert the driver. So what we have to do for this is back in the GUI. Now, first of all, we have to wait for it to load.

So now we'll go on to System Preferences > Screen Resolution just to prove it to you that we haven't fixed the problem and we still can't go higher. So we have to install a driver. You have to go to Machine or to Devices, and you have to make sure that there's no CD mounted already. If there is one, just unmount it.

So go to Devices > Install Guest Additions. Okay, so here's the CD. So now click cancel just to be safe. Okay, so now we'll open up our terminal. Now we're going to type CD space /cd-rom.

Okay, now we're going to type ./VBoxLinuxAdditions-x86.run. Okay, so it's going to run. This is going to take a few seconds and actually be up to type sudo before that in order for it to work properly. Type your password. So now it's going to build this.

Okay, so now that we've done that, press Control + Option or Alt + Delete or Backspace, if your keyboard has a Backspace, as well as the Delete + Backspace. Because Backspace is the actual key that you want to be pressing. You're supposed to be pressing Ctrl + Backspace.

Now press Ctrl + Alt + F1. Now type that nano /etc/x11/xorg.conf thing again. Okay, so right here we still have this code that we've written before. Now we're going to add another thing under your Device after Identifier. We're going to add another line that says Driver, and then tap two tabs then the Box video, then close quote.

So now we're going to press Ctrl + X, Y, Enter. Now we're going to type killall gdm. Okay, so now it's loading up again and you can see that it's a bit larger right here, and I'm just going to log in.

So right here, it's a little large, as you can see the resolution has been increased by some amount, but I'm just going to be showing you real quickly once again. If you want to increase it a little bit higher, you can, but this is the standard resolution size we made it 1024 x 768.

So right here, let me just let it load. We're going to System Preferences > Screen Resolution. See, we don't have to scroll down there anymore, but this is like the standard size, so everything should work with this. But if you want to, when you're editing that file instead of 1024 x 768, you can give it some huge number if you want to be a little higher resolution.

I know that my resolution on my real Linux computer is 16000 by 800 — that's on my old monitor, that's not my huge gigantic line I just got. So I'm just going to click close. So this is a little bit higher resolution. So that's how to increase the resolution on your Linux computer running Ubuntu on VirtualBox.

So thank you for watching. Bad Kids on the 1. Please do subscribe, and goodbye!