Increase Screen Resolution for Ubuntu in Virtual Box

Virtualbox is one of the many virtualization softwares available online. Virtualization software helps you to try out different Operating system without logging out from your original operating system.

Ubuntu is one of the popular Linux Operating systems available. This article shows how to increase screen resolution of Ubuntu in Virtualbox. (By default, virtualbox only shows two screen resolutions)


1. Start Virtual box and log into Ubuntu.
2. Hit the right ctrl key so you can get your mouse pointer outside the virtual machine.
3. Go to top of virtual window, click on devices then select "Install Guest Additions". You will see a window pop up inside Ubuntu showing you that there are some new files mounted in a virtual CDROM drive. One of those files should be VBoxLinuxAdditions.run
4. Click inside the Ubuntu screen and open a Terminal.
5. Go to directory /media/cdrom0 ( cd /media/cdrom0 )
6. Check files in the directory (Use ls ). You should see amongst the files VBoxLinuxAdditions.run .
7. Run this file. (sudo sh ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run)
8. Reboot the virtual machine and log onto the Ubuntu. This time go to "System" - "Preferences" and then "Screen Resolution". You should now have more options.

FreeNX client on Mac

FreeNX client on Mac
I am running FreeNX client on my mac. However, in OSX the ALT key is mapped to Option. When running a X11 application like the FreeNX client, things like ALT-TAB, or ALT-MENU do not work. One way to get around this is to add the following lines to .Xmodmap file.


keycode 66 = Alt_L
clear Mod1
add Mod1 = Alt_L Alt_R

NX Shortcuts
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Esc to get rid of a not responding session
Ctrl + Alt + F to switch to fullscreen/windowed
Ctrl + Alt + E to toggle the lazy encoding
Ctrl + Alt + J to force a drawable's synchronization
Ctrl + Alt + K enable/disable the catching of Alt+Tab and Print Screen keys