Linux® For Dummies®, 8th Edition

Tip #8: “I Want to Change Screen Resolutions”

Do you want or need to swap between resolutions in the GUI on the fly? Suppose that you want to use 1,024 × 768, but you work on Web pages and want to be able to see how they look in a browser at 800 × 600 or even 640 × 480. Your machine is very likely already set up to do this, but you just need to know how!

If your machine is set up for it, you can change resolutions by pressing the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Plus, where Plus is the big plus (+) sign on your number pad — you can’t use the plus sign on the main keyboard for this one. If you’re using a keyboard without a number pad — as you will be if you’re using a laptop — or your machine isn’t set up to be able to change on the fly, you need to change your resolution through your display configuration program. You can find this option at SystemAdministrationDisplay.