When you install Kali Linux as a Hyper-V VM the default display resolution is 1024x786. This is too small to work on. I found some good info on how to do change the display resolution for Kali on YouTube1 and decided to summarize the steps here for your convenience.

Change the resolution

The steps are fairly easy:

  • modify the grub configuration file
  • update grub
  • restart the device

We have to make a modification to a config for grub and restart the machine.
Therefore go to your Kali Linux machine and open a terminal.

Modify the grub configuration file

Open a terminal on your linux device and open the grub configuration file in nano or any other editor of your choice.

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Now have a look for this line

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"

It is possible that there are more parameters after “quiet”. But this is the line we need to modify.
So change this line as follows:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=hyperv_fb:1920x1080"

Info | In my case I switched the resolution to 1920x1080. I haven’t tested any higher resolutions. So, can’t tell if it’s working with higher numbers.
Let me know if you have any experience with that.

Save the modification with nano’s shortcuts Ctrl+X and confirm with y.

Send the updated config to grup

After we made the modification of the grub config file, we need to tell grub about these changes. Do that with the statement here:

sudo update-grub

Restart your device

In the last step, we do a restart of the Kali Linux machine. The new settings should apply and you’ll now have way more place on your desktop.

Enjoy.

  1. Change Kali Linux screen resolution on Hyper-V Virtual Machine (Youtube: HERESJAKEN) ↩︎