New Linux User

HOWTO: Cycle Through Video Resolutions Without Restarting X?

by Jon on February 23rd, 2006

I was looking through the Linux Questions Newbie Forum this morning and came across this great tip. I originally looked at the post because the user was asking how to restart the X server after he had changed his display resolution without rebooting the whole box. Of course we all know how to do that, but I didn’t know this:

Also note that you can put multiple resolutions in your xorg.conf file ie:

Subsection "Display" Depth 24 Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480" ViewPort 0 0 EndSubsection

and you can cycle through them without restarting X with [CTRL]-[ALT]-[+] and [CTRL]-[ALT]-[-].

I haven’t tried this yet because I’m nowhere near my GNU/Linux box at the moment, but it certainly sounds like a cool trick. I can see this setup having a use if you’re running Linux from a USB stick or some other medium where you are using it on different machines.

Thanks, Bulliver!

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