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I would like a black, empty margin surrounding my entire screen, effectively turning a 24" monitor into a 20" one instead.

My setup:

  • Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS
  • Intel Graphics
  • Xfce4 (I'd prefer a cross desktop enviroment solution)

Having tried xrandr with a combination of many different parameters, including: --scale, --panning, etc. I cannot shrink my monitor as desired.

If shrinking my monitor isn't possible with xrandr, fbset or some other tool, does an option to add in my /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf file exist?

LogicalException
  • 313

2 Answers2

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I don't see why you would want to do this, it might even cause burn-in problems depending on your monitor, but instead of changing the display (xrandr) resolution/display/pixels, try this:

  • Make some new XFCE panels on the top, sides, and bottom, with a solid black colour (in the Appearance tab) and options like this in the Display tab (changing the Row Size to however thick you prefer):

    enter image description here

    Maximized windows will not cover the panels, and you could even use one side as an extra-large status / window panel (if your desktop is like that, similar to XFCE's defaults). I'm pretty sure every desktop has some sort of panels that should work similarly.

Xen2050
  • 8,943
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...effectively turning a 24" monitor into a 20" one...

That is surprisingly easy to achieve (replace DVI-0 with your monitor, of course):

xrandr --output DVI-0 --set "underscan hborder" 128 --set "underscan vborder" 128

...and turn it on/off using:

xrandr --output DVI-0 --set underscan on
xrandr --output DVI-0 --set underscan off

On a 24" monitor, the image should shrink down to about 20.2".

The borders have to be values in the range 0-128, where 1 results in the smallest borders, 128 in the largest, and 0 is somewhere in between. I don't know what these values actually represent.

danzel
  • 6,533