How do I increase screen resolution in ubuntu 12.04? I want 1366x768

I get the following output when I run xrandr:

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 800, maximum 8192 x 8192
LVDS1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 304mm x 190mm 1280x800 60.0*+ 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9
VGA1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)

Please give me a suggestion how to get 1366x768.

4 Answers

According to that output, your laptop's native resolution is 1280x800, not 1376x768. Which laptop is it? You can run xrandr -s 1366x768, but it likely won't work, given your hardware seems to report it doesn't support that resolution.

There's only one screen connected: LVDS1, which supports these resolutions:

 1280x800 60.0*+ 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 56.2 640x480 59.9 

The * marks the current resolution, the + the preferred one by this screen.

Since 1366x768 isn't in the list, I'm afraid you can't set that specific resolution for this connected screen.

A possibility could be to scale the output resolution down to your monitors resolution. I tried this and it only worked on some systems. Additionally, there's an unresolved bug regarding a restriction of the mouse movement.

For example:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1280x800 --scale 1.2x1.2

This will give you 1.2 times your native resolution, but the screen output gets downscaled, so the output will look worse than at native resolution.

You could try to force another resolution, but be warned, some monitors could be damaged by this:

xrandr --output LVDS1 --mode 1366x768

More info:

I prefer to do panning on small laptop screens instead of scaling down

xrandr --fb 1600x1200 --output LVDS1 --panning 1600x1200

To work with an old CRT monitor, add the following to your xorg.conf:

before:

Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Default Device" Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

after:

Section "Screen" Identifier "Default Screen" Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Option "TwinView" "0" Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0" Option "metamodes" "1024x768 +0+0; 800x600 +0+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection
EndSection
Section "Device" Identifier "Default Device" Option "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection
Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "CRT-0" HorizSync 30.0 - 110.0 VertRefresh 50.0 - 150.0 Option "DPMS"
EndSection

and get a stable flicker free workable screen.