I'm marking this as Won't Fix in qemu as it doesn't seem like a good idea for us to automatically resize the terminal for a user.
I'd suggest using a wrapper script if this is a desirable behavior for you. ** Changed in: qemu Status: Confirmed => Won't Fix -- gnome-terminal should default to 80x25 for application compatibility https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/464783 You received this bug notification because you are a member of qemu- devel-ml, which is subscribed to QEMU. Status in GNOME Terminal: Won't Fix Status in QEMU: Won't Fix Status in “gnome-terminal” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Status in “qemu-kvm” package in Ubuntu: Invalid Status in “vte” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: Binary package hint: qemu-kvm A minor (but irritating) mismatch in default sizes when running qemu using ncurses rather than SDL. gnome-terminal defaults to a 80x24 console / window size, whereas starting up `qemu -curses` creates a 80x25 (640x480) console. Thus the bottom row is not visible unless you resize your gnome-terminal window. Unsure if this counts as a gnome-terminal or qemu-kvm bug, but it is a usability mismatch. qemu-kvm: Installed: 0.11.0-0ubuntu6 gnome-terminal: Installed: 2.28.1-0ubuntu1