Now that a new version of Whonix is planned soon, can we please get a lazy menu in the boot loader to be able to load a lower resolution by default? I’d rather boot 800x600 instead of the default one that doesn’t fit on screen everytime virtualbox or debian screws something up in an update and workstation fails to boot in full screen mode by default. Because it happened today again.
Sounds like development ceased in between. It’s currently only the final stabilization / testing phase.
Not for Whonix 8. For Whonix 8 + 1 I am open for bolder changes.
A menu in grub to permanent lower grub resolution? Guess would be very difficult.
Or a separate entry for 800x600? Could be possible, but likewise it would be non-standard and therefore have a better chance of breaking the whole boot and grub gets updated by Debian. Bad enough we’re installing two kernels instead of just one.
Or change the default to 800x600? I actually like 1024x768, because when you open in full screen and there is really something to see, you’ve got more space. Any other opinions?
Why not ctrl + f and open the VM in full screen? When your host at least supports 1024x768, that should work well.
Also did you know, you can change this yourself in /etc/default/grub?
Remove the “vga=0x0317”.
Remove “GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480”
add “GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600”.
Safe. Then “sudo update-grub”.
I don’t know what you mean. Please elaborate.
[quote=“adrelanos, post:2, topic:86”][quote author=Greenwhonix link=topic=67.msg559#msg559 date=1392933059]
can we please get a lazy menu in the boot loader to be able to load a lower resolution by default? I’d rather boot 800x600 instead of the default one that doesn’t fit on screen[/quote]
A menu in grub to permanent lower grub resolution? Guess would be very difficult.
Or a separate entry for 800x600? Could be possible, but likewise it would be non-standard and therefore have a better chance of breaking the whole boot and grub gets updated by Debian. Bad enough we’re installing two kernels instead of just one.
Or change the default to 800x600? I actually like 1024x768, because when you open in full screen and there is really something to see, you’ve got more space. Any other opinions?
Why not ctrl + f and open the VM in full screen? When your host at least supports 1024x768, that should work well.
Also did you know, you can change this yourself in /etc/default/grub?
Remove the “vga=0x0317”.
Remove “GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480”
add “GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600”.
Safe. Then “sudo update-grub”.
I don’t know what you mean. Please elaborate.[/quote]
[quote=“adrelanos, post:2, topic:86”][quote author=Greenwhonix link=topic=67.msg559#msg559 date=1392933059]
Now that a new version of Whonix is planned soon[/quote]
Sounds like development ceased in between. It’s currently only the final stabilization / testing phase.
Not for Whonix 8. For Whonix 8 + 1 I am open for bolder changes.
[quote author=Greenwhonix link=topic=67.msg559#msg559 date=1392933059]
can we please get a lazy menu in the boot loader to be able to load a lower resolution by default? I’d rather boot 800x600 instead of the default one that doesn’t fit on screen[/quote]
A menu in grub to permanent lower grub resolution? Guess would be very difficult.
Or a separate entry for 800x600? Could be possible, but likewise it would be non-standard and therefore have a better chance of breaking the whole boot and grub gets updated by Debian. Bad enough we’re installing two kernels instead of just one.
Or change the default to 800x600? I actually like 1024x768, because when you open in full screen and there is really something to see, you’ve got more space. Any other opinions?
Why not ctrl + f and open the VM in full screen? When your host at least supports 1024x768, that should work well.
Also did you know, you can change this yourself in /etc/default/grub?
Remove the “vga=0x0317”.
Remove “GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480”
add “GRUB_GFXMODE=800x600”.
Safe. Then “sudo update-grub”.
I don’t know what you mean. Please elaborate.[/quote]
I mean just an additional menu item that will enforce 800x600 to X, if that’s possible, not a whole submenu of course. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I also know that it’s possible to get a custom resolution without even having to install virtualbox guest additions, I think someone posted an xorg.conf voodoo recipe in the wiki, I tested it and it worked.
The problem is that making use of virtualbox guest additions for screen resolutions is possible when they those work. That means almost always, but when they break, it’s a huge PITA and it requires a lot of painful manual intervention.
Sometimes I would use whonix on a host that has a 1366x768 display. I got a tiling wm there with a toolbar, that’s minus few pixels. The virtualbox window has a main menu at the top and a toolbar at the bottom, that’s minus some pixels again, so the total left for the guest window is less than 768. Recently whonix workstation fetched an update (xorg?) that broke the functionality of the virtualbox video driver I think. Now after startup, X in workstation won’t default to the widescreen size available anymore, but stay 1024x768. This gets the guest window area to have two ugly vertical and horizontal scrollbars that makes the usage of the guest super painful. I have to abuse the right ctrl key to get back to the host, use those scrollbars to scroll the guest window to be able to see the small hidden areas at the right side and at the bottom side.
I was thinking that if it was gone to such great lengths for user friendliness in the gateway (giving users a whole GUI), it won’t hurt to allow the users to choose to boot X in 800x600 from the GRUB menu in the workstation, if that’s technically possible. Because it’s just much easier to select another menu item during boot than messing with grub or xorg config files everytime something like described above happens.