For some years I have been using NoMachine NX for remote access to Linux servers. It has a cross-platform client, allows continuous sessions (seperate to the console login), works well over slow connections and allows resizing of the remote display.
The resizing is a particularly handy feature when reconnecting to the same session from different devices - changing between a large monitor and a small laptop screen for example.
I am now using VNC much more for work, and I found I really missed the ability to resize. Looking into it I found the following procedure:
Establish the target resolution. I check the resolution of the device I am using and subtract about 50 pixels from the height for the menu bar (on a Mac) and maybe 10 pixels width so that the VNC window fits without scrollbars and without having to use fullscreen mode. So with a 1920x1200 monitor I find 1910x1150 comfortable for a VNC session.
Get the modeline for that resolution using the cvt command.
[robini@robini2-pc ~]$ cvt 1910 1150 # 1912x1150 59.90 Hz (CVT) hsync: 71.46 kHz; pclk: 183.50 MHz Modeline "1912x1150_60.00" 183.50 1912 2040 2240 2568 1150 1153 1163 1193 -hsync +vsync
xrand. For the --newmode call just copy and paste the numbers from the output of cvt. To have this step persist you can add the two xrandr commands to the top of the ~/.vnc/xstartup script.[robini@robini2-pc ~]$ xrandr --newmode "1912x1150" 183.50 1912 2040 2240 2568 1150 1153 1163 1193 -hsync +vsync [robini@robini2-pc ~]$ xrandr --addmode default "1912x1150"
xrandr.[robini@robini2-pc ~]$ xrandr -s 1912x1150
That's it. I guess you could set up some alias for laptop vs desktop so you don't have to remember the particular resolutions, but I usually just search the bash history with C-R to quickly find the last switch.