... that there's trouble ahead once I install?
I'm currently testing an usb live version of MX Linux 25.1 xfce and cannot seem to change the screen resolution - it does offer a ton of variations but no matter what I choose, it remains stuck on 1920x1080. It's the same laptop that ran the old MX Linux 23.6 KDE with 1440x810 just fine (yeah, got old eyes...)
Other than that, I'm quite happy with the xfce version and ready to install, hoping that the resolution issue might go away once installed.
Will it?
edited to add: Oddly, it does accept a change to 1368x768, and even one to 1280x1024 (which is not 16:9), but it won't accept either 1440x810 or 1600x900.
Are there any workarounds?
There is a difference between a live disk/usb and an installation on the computer's drive. The installed distro will generally have more capability, but it varies. In any case, the changing of the resolution on an installed system running X can be done using the xrandr command in a terminal as follows.
First run xrandr which produces output such as the following:
Code:
[~]$ xrandr
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 8192 x 8192
DVI-I-1 disconnected primary (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI-1 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 477mm x 268mm
1920x1080 60.00*+ 59.96 50.00 59.94 59.93
1680x1050 59.95 59.88
1400x1050 59.98
1600x900 59.95 60.00 59.82
1280x1024 60.02
1440x900 59.90
1400x900 59.96 59.88
1280x960 60.00
1440x810 59.97
1368x768 59.88 59.85
1280x800 59.99 59.97 59.81 59.91
1280x720 60.00 59.99 59.86 60.00 50.00 59.94 59.74
1024x768 60.04 70.07 60.00
<snip>
From the output, the default resolution used is the one marked with the asterisk *:
Code:
1920x1080 60.00*+ 59.96 50.00 59.94 59.93
The monitor is connect through an HDMI output with the name "HDMI-1".
The available resolutions on this hardware are listed (snipped off for brevity). Any of those other resolutions should thus be able to used. For example, to set a new resolution of 1024x768, the following command can be used on this machine:
Code:
xrandr --output HDMI-1 --mode 1024x768
The command includes the name of the connected output given by xrandr, and the new resolution which has been selected from the list of available ones.
What happens often when this sort of command is run, is that the screen may go blank, that is, totally black, as if there's been a crash, but it's just X taking a moment or two to recalibrate the resolution, which should come up, so one has to wait. It can be up to 10 seconds. This means of changing resolution is pretty robust, but if it fails, there may be some further details that can be entered into the xrandr command that will help it succeed.
I can't say whether the above works on a live disk not having tried it.
