3 ms·

Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop Headline: Good (or even acceptable) high-DPI & multi-monitor support Description: High-DPI support is really bad in Ubuntu right now,

Flavor: Ubuntu Desktop Headline: Good (or even acceptable) high-DPI & multi-monitor support Description: High-DPI support is really bad in Ubuntu right now, and multiple external monitors are poorly supported. Here are some of problems I experience regularly: - Ubuntu won't remember screen configurations when unplugging and "replugging" external monitors, which means I have to reconfigure them again and again. - Often Ubuntu will freeze / crash when unplugging external monitors or when powering the laptop up after putting it in sleep mode and unplugging the monitor cable while the laptop sleeps. The only safe way to unplug a monitor is to first manually disable it in the "Display" settings, which honestly is not acceptable. - Ubuntu often does not even notice when monitors get unplugged, hence it keeps displaying apps on (now unplugged) monitors. When opening the "Display" settings it will usually recognize the mistake and remove the extra monitors from the config. - High DPI in general is still poorly supported in apps and the performance is very bad compared to e.g. Windows, to the point that I'm not even able to play 4k videos. - Some keyboard/mouse gestures don't work on secondary monitors (e.g. using the arrow keys to navigate through menus) Role: CTO --- ADDENDUM: By high-DPI I especially mean 4k displays (e.g. 3840 pixels wide), which are becoming more popular and which are almost completely unusable without proper DPI scaling. Another problem with the "Display" settings dialogue is the weird behavior when dragging window icons around to arrange them: Often they will get stuck or outright refuse to move where I want them to be, such that I need to resort to some hacks (e.g. moving monitors around each other in circles) to get them where I want them to be. Also, when plugging in an external monitor often Ubuntu will not detect it correctly and display it as having a resolution of 800x600 pixels, refusing to adjust it or enable the monitor. The only way to fix this is to reboot the machine. In general I want to thank all developers of Ubuntu, which -while not perfect- is still by far my preferred OS for any serious development work.

stevepike 10y ago
I run gnome on Ubuntu because of how bad it was in Unity, but that's also not perfect. On a two-monitor (both 4k) desktop where I'm not plugging in or unplugging screens, waking from sleep will commonly only bring up one screen, or the arrangement will have changed, or it'll get stuck in a mode where the screens go dark after 10 seconds of inactivity. +1 that the UI scaling is nowhere near as good as OSX in either unity or gnome. I'm either stuck with normal sized fonts but oversized UI elements (button / text field height) or the reverse. Definitely agree about the "Display" settings dialogue annoyance. Also, Monitors with varying DPIs were so bad that I just bought another 4k screen rather than trying to make my 1080p one work alongside the 4k one.
- beefield 10y ago
  Debian Gnome dual monitor setup also darkens one monitor regularly when pugging/unplugging screens, took a while for me to understand that it only sets the screen brightness of one monitor to zero. So adjusting the brightness up bringd the monitor back alive again.
hayfield 10y ago
+1 to all these points. A couple of related issues that cause me frequent problems... - In addition to detecting when monitors are removed, detecting when they are there from the start. If I have a monitor plugged in at boot, it is generally not detected. I instead have to wait for the login screen to appear before connecting the external monitor. - When opening a new window, there seems little logic as to which monitor it will appear on, and where (particularly annoying in combination with being limited to a single DPI setting across multiple monitors despite each needing different scaling (sudden unexpectedly huge or tiny windows) - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14003160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14003160 ) Role: Developer
ryandrake 10y ago
Thank you. Having used macOS for years now, where the transition to High-DPI displays was pretty much un-noticable, I was shocked to install Ubuntu on a machine with a High-DPI display and not see everything working right. Mouse cursor too small. Fonts too small. Icons too small. Change this. Now text is OK. Tweak that. Now icons are all right, but it didn't affect Firefox for some reason. Change that other thing. Now mouse cursor is the right size for a while but the system changes it back every time I come back from sleep. I still haven't gotten it all to work reliably. And I have no idea if it's Ubuntu, if it's the window manager, if it's the desktop environment, if it's X (or Mir, or whatever they are calling the window system these days) if it's individual applications, or a combination of some of those. It's crazy land.

stevepike 10y ago

I run gnome on Ubuntu because of how bad it was in Unity, but that's also not perfect. On a two-monitor (both 4k) desktop where I'm not plugging in or unplugging screens, waking from sleep will commonly only bring up one screen, or the arrangement will have changed, or it'll get stuck in a mode where the screens go dark after 10 seconds of inactivity. +1 that the UI scaling is nowhere near as good as OSX in either unity or gnome. I'm either stuck with normal sized fonts but oversized UI elements (button / text field height) or the reverse. Definitely agree about the "Display" settings dialogue annoyance. Also, Monitors with varying DPIs were so bad that I just bought another 4k screen rather than trying to make my 1080p one work alongside the 4k one.

beefield 10y ago
Debian Gnome dual monitor setup also darkens one monitor regularly when pugging/unplugging screens, took a while for me to understand that it only sets the screen brightness of one monitor to zero. So adjusting the brightness up bringd the monitor back alive again.

hayfield 10y ago

+1 to all these points. A couple of related issues that cause me frequent problems... - In addition to detecting when monitors are removed, detecting when they are there from the start. If I have a monitor plugged in at boot, it is generally not detected. I instead have to wait for the login screen to appear before connecting the external monitor. - When opening a new window, there seems little logic as to which monitor it will appear on, and where (particularly annoying in combination with being limited to a single DPI setting across multiple monitors despite each needing different scaling (sudden unexpectedly huge or tiny windows) - see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14003160 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14003160 ) Role: Developer

ryandrake 10y ago

Thank you. Having used macOS for years now, where the transition to High-DPI displays was pretty much un-noticable, I was shocked to install Ubuntu on a machine with a High-DPI display and not see everything working right. Mouse cursor too small. Fonts too small. Icons too small. Change this. Now text is OK. Tweak that. Now icons are all right, but it didn't affect Firefox for some reason. Change that other thing. Now mouse cursor is the right size for a while but the system changes it back every time I come back from sleep. I still haven't gotten it all to work reliably. And I have no idea if it's Ubuntu, if it's the window manager, if it's the desktop environment, if it's X (or Mir, or whatever they are calling the window system these days) if it's individual applications, or a combination of some of those. It's crazy land.