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Sam Erickson
Sam Erickson

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HiDPI In Kali Linux Through RDP | Hyper-V

๐Ÿ“ƒ HiDPI in Kali Linux Through RDP

To get started kali maintains a collection of โ€œPre-Built Virtual Machinesโ€ that we can download and use.

Screenshot of available pre-built virtual machines on the kali linux webpage: https://www.kali.org/get-kali/#kali-virtual-machines

In my case I downloaded the Hyper-V version by following the official documentation.

๐Ÿ’ป Monitors

Once I got the pre-built virtual machine installed, and I started it up, I was pleased to see that the โ€œEnhanced Sessionโ€ was already enabled. This is a setting within Hyper-V that uses RDP to connect to the virtual machine. This gives us a bunch of nice features, like shared clipboard, and the ability to use all our connected monitors.

In my case using all connected monitors was an issue, since I have one 1080p monitor and one 4k monitor. So enabling Kali hiDPI Mode would make my 1080p monitor useless, but not enabling it would make the text on my 4k monitor way too small.

โš–๏ธ Monitor Scaling Through Display Manger Settings

I was disappointed to find out that DPI scaling though XFCE display settings had no effect.

Image of XFCE display settings window.

Normally I would be able to set the scaling of my 4k monitor to 2x or 1.5x and leave my 1080p monitor to 1x, and things would appear correctly on both monitors, but since I could not get this to work I was left with configuring my Hyper-V settings to use only one monitor at a time. Then I can either use or disable Kali HiDPI Mode as required.

โš™๏ธ Hyper-V Settings

In order to change the RDP settings used when you select โ€œConnectโ€ on a virtual machine within Hyper-V we can use the โ€œEdit Session Settingsโ€ฆโ€ button:

Screenshot of Hyper-V with a red box around the โ€œEdit Session Settingsโ€ฆโ€ button.

That will open the RDP Display Configuration window prior to connecting:

Screenshot of RDP Display Configuration window, showing the โ€œuse all my monitorsโ€ button and a โ€œconnectโ€ button.

This allows us to configure RDP prior to connecting to our virtual machine. In this case we can un-check the โ€œUse all my monitorsโ€ option and then connect. From there we can set Kali HiDPI Mode accordingly and we are done.

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