Garbage display in full-screen VMs with some Linux distros

[EricBrunel]

I'm having issues when going full-screen with Linux VMs with some distributions: the display goes wrong and it's impossible to do anything in the VM anymore. I'm getting the problem with Open Suse Leap 15.0 and Ubuntu 16.04. I've attached a screenshot of the Open Suse VM when it is full-screen. I'm using VirtualBox 5.2.16 and both VMs have up-to-date guest additions. The ones in the Open Suse VM were provided with the distribution, and I built myself the ones in the Ubuntu VM, but both have the same kind of display issue after switching to full-screen. I tried going full-screen while the VM was starting, but it just changes the symptoms: I do get the login screen but not with the proper screen size, and after logging in, either the display goes completely black, or I get the normal display, but not fit to my screen. The "Auto-resize guest display" option is on. Switching back to windowed mode works though: the display becomes normal again.

I have older Linux distributions for which everything works fine, including an Open Suse 42.2 and an even older CentOS 5.11. These can be switched to full-screen without any problem.

The host computer is an iMac 27" - resolution 2560x1440 - running macOS 10.9.5.

[socratis]

3D support for X11 guests as "user supported". There is call for help from the developers for end-users to pitch in helping with this. 3D support for X11 guests. For example:

Just to summarise the situation: we do not currently have free developer time (as in developers with the required skills who are not already taken up with other work) to investigate this bug, much as we understand that it is annoying to the people affected. This situation might change, but that is not something we can promise. Of course, I quite understand that if this means that something else fits any individual's requirements better than VirtualBox then it is a sensible solution to use that instead.

However, the fact that VirtualBox is open source means that users who are interested have another option to get changes made, by doing the work themselves or crowd-sourcing the work. If you go this way of course, please communicate with us before starting and while doing the work, as we hate to see work go to waste due to misunderstandings like mismatches with our development style. Though this is more a fix than a feature, so likely to be easier to integrate.

See also the X11 guest 3D wiki page. Windows guest 3D is not user-maintained, but we are still rather limited in what we can do.

I would kindly request that as of now people do not add unneeded information to this ticket, such as that this is still not fixed or does not work for a given person. However, if you would like to subscribe to the ticket please add a "me too" comment, and we will delete the comment and add your nickname to the "CC" list.

[EricBrunel]

OK, thanks for the answer. I tried disabling any kind of 3D effects to see if it changed anything, but it didn't. No big deal though, I can live with my VMs in a window.