Fixing virtual console resolution with nVidia driver

I tried a number of things to get a laptop with an nVidia GT218M [NVS 3100M] video card to provide decent resolution in virtual consoles. This particular unit needs to run the proprietary video drivers to behave well--the big exception being the big-and-fuzzy virtual terminal text.

What finally worked for me in /etc/default/grub was

# If you change this file, run 'update-grub' afterwards to update
# /boot/grub/grub.cfg.
# For full documentation of the options in this file, see:
#   info -f grub -n 'Simple configuration'

GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
GRUB_SAVEDDEFAULT=true
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

# Uncomment to enable BadRAM filtering, modify to suit your needs
# This works with Linux (no patch required) and with any kernel that obtains
# the memory map information from GRUB (GNU Mach, kernel of FreeBSD ...)
#GRUB_BADRAM="0x01234567,0xfefefefe,0x89abcdef,0xefefefef"

# Uncomment to disable graphical terminal (grub-pc only)
#GRUB_TERMINAL=console

# The resolution used on graphical terminal
# note that you can use only modes which your graphic card supports via VBE
# you can see them in real GRUB with the command `vbeinfo'
#GRUB_GFXMODE=640x480
GRUB_GFXMODE=1600x900
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep

# Uncomment if you don't want GRUB to pass "root=UUID=xxx" parameter to Linux
#GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID=true

# Uncomment to disable generation of recovery mode menu entries
#GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"

# Uncomment to get a beep at grub start
#GRUB_INIT_TUNE="480 440 1"

The important parts are the GRUB_GFXMODE=1600x900 and GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep lines.

Don't forget to

$ update-grub

Credit goes to StackExchange.

Adding "Run" options to Thunar

 Clicking on executable shell files no longer executes them in Thunar.

While there is a hidden option to revert to the old behavior, I decided in a new install to instead add right menu "Run" and "Run in terminal" custom actions. First create the custom actions from within Thunar to get valid unique-ids, and then open ~/.config/Thunar/uca.xml and edit the entries as needed:

<action>
    <icon>system-run</icon>
    <name>Run</name>
    <unique-id>xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx-x</unique-id>
    <command>exec ./&apos;%n&apos;</command>
    <description>Execute this file</description>
    <patterns>*</patterns>
    <other-files/>
    <text-files/>
</action>
<action>
    <icon>xterm-color</icon>
    <name>Run in terminal</name>
    <unique-id>yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy-y</unique-id>
    <command>xterm -T &apos;%n&apos; -e &quot;./&apos;%n&apos;; echo &apos;&apos;; read -p &apos;Press &lt;Enter&gt; to close...&apos;&quot;</command>
    <description>Execute this file in a terminal</description>
    <patterns>*</patterns>
    <other-files/>
    <text-files/>
</action>