Ubuntu – How to enable early KMS on Ubuntu

You can add missing resolutions to Ubuntu 12.04 using xrandr.

First, use cvt to create a new resolution mode.

sudo cvt 1920 1080 60

Part of the output should be similar to this: "Modeline "1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync" (w/o the quotes).

Next, declare a new resolution mode.

sudo xrandr --newmode "1920x1080_60.00" 173.00 1920 2048 2248 2576 1080 1083 1088 1120 -hsync +vsync

Next, find out the name of your video device.

sudo xrandr -q

Mine was named "Virtual1" (running a virtual machine). Once you know the name of your device, you can, finally, add your new resolution mode to the device/system.

sudo xrandr --addmode Virtual1 1920x1080_60.00

See more information in the "Adding undetected resolutions" section here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Config/Resolution/#Adding_undetected_resolutions

EDIT: Ubuntu 14.04 sort of supports high resolution screens and allows you to scale the panel and launcher with a simple slider under System Settings -> Displays. It's still a bit buggy: it doesn't work for some apps like Spotify doesn't scale and Thunderbird don't scale icons and the content of the emails.

So while Ubuntu took a giant leap forward, the below solution is still the only fully functioning way of scaling everything on Ubuntu.

You can scale everything with xrandr but the result is not as pretty as it could be if there was true high resolution support.

To scale your resolution, first find the name of your display with xrandr:

lars:~$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1366 x 768, maximum 1600 x 1600
LVDS connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 344mm x 194mm
   1366x768       60.0*+
   1280x768       60.0 +
   1280x720       60.0 +
   1024x768       60.0 +
   1024x600       60.0 +
   800x600        60.0 +
   800x480        60.0 +
   720x480        60.0 +
   640x480        60.0 +
DFP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
CRT1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

So, in my case my laptop display is called LVDS.

Then run the following to scale your resolution:

xrandr --output LVDS --scale 0.75x0.75

The Launcher and Panel might disappear for a moment, but just hover your cursor over them and they should reappear. You might also have to resize any open windows so that they fit the smaller resolution.

I wish there was true high resolution support that was this easy to configure. Sadly even GNOME 3.10 seems to only support changing the font size, even though GNOME handles that a lot better than Unity.