Ubuntu – Ubuntu resolution with Ultrabook

displayresolutionultrabookunity

I installed 12.10 to Asus Zenbook Prime UX31A. Now I face a resolution problem. The default resolution is 1920×1080. But everything is too small with this resolution. Icons, Unity, file system, browsers etc. For example in Chrome only when I set the zoom to 150% sites view normal. When I use the 16:9 resolution 1360×768 the size problem is fixed, but in this mode the display colours and view are blurry and thick, so it harms the eyes. And as my display supports 1920×1080, I think that I better keep this native resolution and fix size problem instead.

some Screenshots: Screenshots 1, Screenshots 2

How can I solve this and get the desktop displayed in an acceptable size?

Best Answer

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.

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