Cannot change openSUSE screen resolution in vmware fusion

[QuasarRyan]

I 've successfully installed the openSUSE on my M1 MacBook Air, but I can't change the screen resolution. It is always the default 1024*768 even if the open-vm-tools and the open-em-tools-desktop was already installed. When I tried changing it in the Settings, the screen just flickered to what it should be and turned back to the default resolution. How can I solve this? 

[Technogeezer]

What is the Linux kernel version in use in your openSUSE VM? If it is not 5.14 or later, the kernel does not have a graphics driver that will allow open-vm-tools to adjust the screen resolution. 

[QuasarRyan]

It's "5.14.9-1-default" and I haven't update it. By the way, I've choose "Other Linux 5.x kernel 64-bit Arm" when installing it.

[ColoradoMarmot]

So the preview has full guest OS support for a limited set.  If it's not in the preview guide, YMMV.

[Technogeezer]

I was able to get the latest openSUSE Tumbleweed installed with kernel 5.14.9-1, GNOME desktop, and open-vm-tools 11.3.0.1. This combination allows me to change resolutions and have them "stick". 

Note however that Tumbleweed enables Wayland by default, so the advice to disable it in the TP guide still holds. I could not find a convenient way to edit the config to disable Wayland (I'm a SuSE newbie, more familiar with RHEL derivatives) during the installation. I had to force a non-graphical single user boot, then edit /etc/gdm/custom.conf as advised in the TP guide. After exiting single user and letting startup continue, the system booted into GNOME and changing resolutions worked. 

[Technogeezer]

I have reproduced your issue . I had installed the GNOME environment as my default GUI instead of Plasma. I subsequently installed the Plasma environment from the Tumbleweed distro. Now, If I log in using a Plasma session instead of GNOME and I attempt to change the screen resolution - it snaps back to the original display resolution. Logging out and switching back to a GNOME session permits me to change  resolution.

There is obviously something different between what Plasma is doing and GNOME. 

Update: Yes, there are differences. What we're seeing with failure to have screen resolution changes "stick" is a result of a long-standing bug in KDE Plasma's kscreen component with virtual graphics drivers. The bug is seen not only in Fusion on ARM, but other virtualization platforms (seems to have been reported on Parallels and VirtualBox, etc.

From what I've seen, the developers may have fixed it for Wayland, but X11 is still broken. Some poking around reveals that fixes for X11 may have been recently checked into the development tree. Unknown on how long it will take for those to get picked up by the distributions.

For now, I'd recommend running GNOME - the workarounds to get resizing to work with KDE Plasma are pretty ugly.

[Technogeezer]

Playing around a bit more - I may have found a workaround that's less ugly that will let you change resolutions with KDE Plasma (based on some more Internet research).

Open System Settings.

Under the "Workspace" category, select "Startup and Shutdown".

Select "Background Services" on the left hand side of the screen.

Scroll down the list of "Background Services" until you see "KScreen 2" under the "Startup Services" category. Uncheck "KScreen 2" and stop the service using the pause button on the right if you see it running.

Log out and log back in again.

The session will start at the default 1024x768 resolution each time you log in, but you can now change it in System Settings under Hardware -> Display and Monitor -> Display Configuration. 

[Tshepo26]

I had a similar issue and the above workaround helped. Thanks...