Virtual Machines

Run Monarch in a virtual machine and troubleshoot display scaling with Niri.

QEMU is the officially supported way to test Monarch in a virtual machine. VirtualBox and VMware Workstation may work, but their virtual graphics devices and Wayland support vary and are not tested as part of the Monarch release process.

For a comfortable test machine, start with:

• 8 GiB of RAM
• 4 virtual CPUs
• A 40 GiB or larger virtual disk
• Hardware virtualization enabled on the host

Boot the ISO and follow the installation guide. A full-disk installation is appropriate for an empty virtual disk.

Display scaling

Monarch uses Niri, not Hyprland. Do not edit ~/.config/hypr/monitors.conf or follow Hyprland monitor instructions from older releases.

To configure the virtual display:

1. Press SUPER + ALT + Space.
2. Open Actions → Hardware → Displays.
3. Adjust the scale or open the display arrangement tool.

You can also cycle the focused display through Monarch's standard scales with SUPER + CTRL + D.

From a terminal, list Niri's displays and set a persistent scale:

monarch display list
monarch display scale <output> 1

Replace <output> with a name reported by monarch display list.

VirtualBox and VMware

These hypervisors are best-effort only. If the desktop does not resize with the VM window:

1. Install and enable the guest tools provided by the hypervisor.
2. Reboot the guest.
3. Use Monarch's Displays panel or monarch display scale to correct the scale.

If the compositor fails to start, try another virtual graphics controller or use QEMU before reporting a Monarch installer issue.

Instructions written for Omarchy's Hyprland configuration do not apply to current Monarch installations.