I have today downloaded and installed the daily iso of Xubuntu Questing and installed it in KVM/QEMU.
All appears good until I try increasing the screen resolution to the native screen resolution of 1920x1080 when the screen freezes and the display change window can not be closed down. This problem occurs both whilst in the live system before install and also in the installed system
The whole screen from that point is totally frozen and I am unable to do anything else except use the Ctrl+Alt+F3 option in the VM menu to get to a cli and use the shutdown command.
I have always used KVM/QEMU in the past to test new or pre-release versions of Xubuntu and have never seen this problem before so I’m asking if anyone else has seen the same problem during their tries of this version of Xubuntu Questing or any of the other DE versions.
As the screen is totally frozen I can not easily get any further details to help get it working properly.
If you can get to a cli and use commands, are you able to use the journalctl -b command in that cli and check its output for any messages related to the total GUI screen freeze?
Thanks for that thought; I will try it later to see what i can find and report back.
Just out of interest i tried the Mate version also last night and had the same problem. I will also check if it happens on my two other machines, a desktop and another laptop, all currently running Xubuntu 24.04 perfectly.
I have just tried that same beta version you show and the same problem remains; when I try to change the screen resolution using the Display option from Settings-manager and move from the startup resolution to the screen’s native 1440x900 I get that resolution but the screen is then frozen and I can’t get rid of the Display window.
I have used Ctrl+Alt+F3 from virt-manager’s menu to get to cli and looked at journalctl -b but found nothing helpful so far though I’m not sure what to look for
I wonder if this is due to using KVM/QEMU rather than a hard metal install; it has never been a problem in the past.
Display >> change to correct screen resolution, all good after applying changes.
But…subsequent attempts to change resolution again via Display freezes the window and I can only get out of it by right-clicking on the panel icon and closing from there.
Second test, full installation: failed for some reason.
Will try again later if I have time.
Forgot to mention the following; host system HP laptop running Ubuntu 24.04.3 using GNOME Boxes for creating virtual machines.
Interesting; it’s another VM system so it may point to a problem with VMs of some sort. I don’t know Gnome Boxes at all but is it some form of KVM or QEMU that adds Gnome system configuration on top or is it something totally different?
Looking at its dependencies suggests it is close to KVM or QEMU but I just have no experience of it.
I haven’t used Virtualbox for a long time now so I don’t think I will try that but I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has tried it.
Also I do not have any way at present to try a hard metal install but will do so as soon as I’m able and have the time and disk space to spare.
I suddenly realised I still had an up to date version of Virtualbox on my desktop machine though I never use VBox these days.
I created a VM of the beta version that failed in KVM/QEMU using VBox, changed the resolution successfully and all appeared well with the installation so I’m being drawn to the likelihood of KVM/QEMU being the reason for this difficulty.
Not sure how much more I can help with this but if there is any more detailed info that might help let me know and I’ll endeavour to get it.
I have now added VBox to my laptop as well as the desktop and again installed the same beta version ISO and once again everything is working as expected and I can change the resolution.
This seems to point very firmly towards KVM/QEMU under virt-manager being unable to carry out the resolution change for some currently unknown reason.
As I said before I will provide any other info needed to report a bug but I’m not sure for which package the bug would be,
Not sure if this is related, but I had this problem testing Xubuntu 25.10 in Virt-Manager. The only way I was able to change the resolution was to disable 3d acceleration in the Virt-Manager settings. The host machine at the time was Debian 13 Trixie.
If this is QEMU/KVM/virt-manager-specific: in case it might be useful, in VMs I actively try to avoid setting resolution in the desktop environment’s settings, prefer to set resolution by other methods.
For QEMU/KVM/virt-manager specifically:
You can set a specific fixed resolution in the VM’s settings
If your VM’s Video device is either QXL or Virtio, installing and enabling spice-vdagent in the guest can dynamically resize the VM’s display to the size of the VM window.
Not sure whether your goal is to change your VM’s screen resolution or if you’re only seeking to troubleshoot the Xfce display settings related freeze - if the latter, sorry for the noise.
Great!
Can you add yourself to the bug I raised about this which might get a bit more interest in the problem.
@halogen2
I tried adding the video resolution figures as suggested in one of your links to the /etc/default/grub file video=Virtual1:1920x1080@60
ran sudo update-grub but it didn’t make any change on rebooting the VM.
I just tried editing the VM’s XML file which you also suggested but it will not let me make those edits suggested in spite of the setting to allow editing of XMLs in preferences.