Month: May 2022

Why no fullscreen after Vmware install?

The linux desktop live preview I tried is fullscreen when it boots up. This is via the Vmware Workstation Player tool. I am play around with it as like a normal desktop. After I clicked install and let if finish complete, the next boot only makes the desktop very small. It won’t stretch the full width, height of my screen. The small screen is centered and maximizing the window several times has no effects.

ANSWER

Make sure that the VMware Tools are updated/installed after the installation of the Linux desktop is completed. Go to the menu of the VMware Player window while the virtual desktop is active/running. Then find the Install VMware Tools menu entry or something with a similar text. Try to resize the window again. Go fullscreen (also from the same menu). Restart the virtual desktop if necessary.

If it still does not resize to adapt to the screen’s full width and height, try to restart the vmtoolsd service. Open a terminal. Then type the following command.

sudo systemctl restart vmtoolsd

This might have to be done each time the screen doesn’t adjust to the screen size automatically.

Screen record to gif on Linux

I would like to record my desktop screen. Maybe a portion of it not the entirety of the screen. Then convert that into an animated GIF image. Would like to use less or none at all on image editing software where possible. What are the tools I will use in a Linux desktop?

ANSWER

My go to tools for this are Kazam and Gifcurry.

Kazam for screen recording my desktop. It is a simple tool. Has options to target fullscreen can include all screens, a window or an area on the desktop. The latter may be exactly what you need. The results are saved into a MP4 file.

Gifcurry can then load that video file, make edits, save it into animated gif.

I can also skip Gifcurry. Use ffmpeg directly instead. It can do a lot of things to handle video, audio, other media files and streams. But a simple command such as this one will do for starters:

ffmpeg -i video-file.mp4 -f gif output.gif