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Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working corre

Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.

bonoetmalo 9y ago
Gnome has always worked pretty well with High DPI. But yes Linux display managers are generally pretty bad, as I learned with my 1440p 13 inch laptop as recently as 2015.
Symbiote 9y ago
I have no problems on KDE for home use, I think the problems are mixing multiple screens with different pixel densities.
- mixmastamyk 9y ago
  Works great with Mate.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Best i understand, the problem child is Gnome. The devs involved there basically ignore xorg provided DPI information, resulting in all kinds of problems.
pedrocr 9y ago
2560x1440 doesn't even require HiDPI support really. Just increasing the font sizes is enough. The Ubuntu Unity desktop has abstracted away that in a single slider for a long time. Apparently the next GNOME version is going to go all the way and do non-integer scaling of controls as well but in my experience that's just a small benefit, just tweaking up the font sizes is more than enough.
gkop 9y ago
Surprisingly, both engineers on the 2560x1440 are happy! They run Ubuntu with a second screen at their desks (27” 2560x1440 external monitors). I’m actually the one that’s unhappy because their font size is too small for me to see when pairing ;) BTW I think 2560x1440 may not be high enough to technically be considered HiDPI?
- indemnity 9y ago
  As someone with a 2560x1440 (27”) display at work and a 5120x2880 (27”) display at home, the former is very much not HiDPI, not even close :)
  - maxnoe 9y ago
    DPI is Dots per inch. It's a density. As a matter of fact, 2560×1440 on a 14" notebook display is nearly identical to 5120×2880 on a 27" display.
    - indemnity 9y ago
      I'm talking about 2560x1440 on 27", as is GP, and comparing that resolution at 27" to the pixel doubled resolution at 27"? 108 PPI for the former is not HiDPI, which is my point. I'm quite aware of pixel density, but thanks for the Wikipedia definition.
jhoechtl 9y ago
HiDPI on Linux is pretty much non existent. I am telling from experience. I have booth a decent 4K external monitor and a HiDPI IPS internal display. The only setup which is ok in the sense of least horrible is Gnome mutter Wayland with experimental per monitor fractional scaling enabled. And this one is only ok if you can restrict yourself to the few ported pure GTK3 Gnome apps. Which means not that much. No Firefox. No Chrome. No Thunderbird. And the speed of fixing HiDPI on Linux has actually slowed down. Frnakly, and I am a hard core Linux OSS fan - come back in two years and check again. The Linux desktop IS dead.
- denimnerd 9y ago
  linux desktop is isn’t dead.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Linux desktop is doing fine. But I prefer to avoid GTK when possible. It's years behind Qt. Some thing like Firefox are necessary though, but it's a pity it's stuck with GTK.
- saltcured 9y ago
  So, what exactly is it that you expect as "HiDPI" support which is missing? As far as I can recall, it has been possible to configure the actual physical size/DPI for a monitor for many, many years. Any properly functioning X application should then be able to draw things a correct size on the screen, e.g. fonts sized in points or images and figures scaled to actual widths. I think this infrastructure may even pre-date the switch from XFree86 to Xorg. Is your complaint that there are still some applications which ignore this monitor DPI metadata or which do other pixel-based techniques? Like the previous poster, I stick to 1920x1080 on my 14-inch class Thinkpad. In my office I have dual 28-inch 4K monitors. These have identical dot pitch to my Thinkpad, so each monitor is like having a 2x2 array of my Thinkpad screens. When I made sure the monitors were set with the correct DPI, everything worked exactly as I would expect. Whatever rendered as one pixel on my laptop would also be one pixel on my workstation, and I just had 8 times more real estate on my dual monitor desktop. But, I sit further from the monitors than I do my laptop screen while also using them for much longer stretches of time. So, I adjusted the workstation to pretend it had higher DPI so that things would render a little bigger. It's been a few years, but I think I may have had to separately adjust Firefox because it has some of its own weird assumptions about fonts and DPI that I assume come from their renderer straddling several different platforms. I also had to adjust emacs and xterm to change from my decades old fixed font preferences to start using scalable fonts.
shazow 9y ago
The bad news: There's no unified HiDPI solution on Linux that works well end-to-end. The good news: You don't really need one. Bumping the font configuration fixes 80% of the scenarios, and the rest I tweak on a case-by-case basis. The good standards-conforming apps (e.g. modern terminals, browsers, etc) automatically multiply the font sizes by your screen DPI. Most desktop managers have a scale sliders for the GUI size, if you're into that. Some stragglers include Steam which recently added support for a 2x size multiplier (it's something, but not the best). You kinda get exposed to how the sausage is made, but the sausage still tastes great. Linux desktop is better than it ever was, but the road to perfection is long and eternal.
- eof 9y ago
  my system76 handles 4k perfectly
  - gurkendoktor 9y ago
    system76 actually ships a custom daemon that makes mixed LowDPI/HiDPI setups easier to manage, and I hope other distros will follow suit: https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234 https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234
thomastjeffery 9y ago
Most apps are written in GTK or Qt, which do scaling well. The main issue is that scaling can't really be done on a per-display basis.
MightySCollins 9y ago
I wish everything just used wayland and scaled correctly I am sick of having to launch chrome with an environment variable so it can run on one screen and having another instance for another. Also silly things like file dialogs not fitting. It's annoying when you look and the issues are all from years ago and still not fixed.
merb 9y ago
The biggest problem in linux is not directly HiDPI. HiDPI works (mostly). However if you can't use wayland you will have a problem when you need the following: Multiple monitors with different screen resultions. Lets say your laptop has 4k and you use two external monitors with 1080p than it gets tricky with older wayland or x.org. However on later stable/edge channels most things are probably better than when I tested this and I even have a colleague which has a 13" xps with ubuntu which works pretty will with its docking station.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  If you have a good GPU you can use the xrandr commandline tool to set up display scaling, so your secondary low-DPI screen is rendered at high DPI and scaled down. Then you only need one DPI setting for your DE.
  - merb 9y ago
    Well, it‘s good that it „could“ work, however i expect it to work without searching the Internet for xrandr configs. (And as said newer Weston/Wayland work way better)
    - nitrogen 9y ago
      I agree; I post the fact that its possible more as a condemnation of the UI for not getting it right.
sridca 9y ago
I have a Thinkpad P71 and I run NixOS on it. Works great with a 5k monitor, and DPI is perfect.
SZJX 9y ago
It's actually quite OK, with just some minor annoyances. Three scenarios for my use case: 1. Use the laptop screen only. This is easy. Just change the DPI value in my ~/.Xprofile and everything is solved. 2. Use external monitors only. Just use the default DPI value. 3. Use laptop screen in combination with external monitors. This doesn't occur hat often. But when I have to do this, there are also some ways to make it work. You can refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI for some reference. - The first way is to increase the DPI in ~/.Xprofile and actually scale up the external monitor instead. I don't like this method since the external monitor just looks blurry for some reason. - Or you can keep the DPI and downscale your internal monitor. - Or, and this is what I do currently, use apps that support manually setting DPI in their settings, e.g. Firefox and Thunderbird, on the laptop display. You can also manually change font sizes of apps that you're going to use on the laptop display. This is a bit inconvenient but the display result will look totally natural.

Do your co-workers not have issues with HiDPI support on Linux? I've heard it's not the best experience and can require quite some fiddling to get working correctly.

bonoetmalo 9y ago

Gnome has always worked pretty well with High DPI. But yes Linux display managers are generally pretty bad, as I learned with my 1440p 13 inch laptop as recently as 2015.

Symbiote 9y ago

I have no problems on KDE for home use, I think the problems are mixing multiple screens with different pixel densities.

mixmastamyk 9y ago
Works great with Mate.
digi_owl 9y ago
Best i understand, the problem child is Gnome. The devs involved there basically ignore xorg provided DPI information, resulting in all kinds of problems.

pedrocr 9y ago

2560x1440 doesn't even require HiDPI support really. Just increasing the font sizes is enough. The Ubuntu Unity desktop has abstracted away that in a single slider for a long time. Apparently the next GNOME version is going to go all the way and do non-integer scaling of controls as well but in my experience that's just a small benefit, just tweaking up the font sizes is more than enough.

gkop 9y ago

Surprisingly, both engineers on the 2560x1440 are happy! They run Ubuntu with a second screen at their desks (27” 2560x1440 external monitors). I’m actually the one that’s unhappy because their font size is too small for me to see when pairing ;) BTW I think 2560x1440 may not be high enough to technically be considered HiDPI?

indemnity 9y ago
As someone with a 2560x1440 (27”) display at work and a 5120x2880 (27”) display at home, the former is very much not HiDPI, not even close :)
- maxnoe 9y ago
  DPI is Dots per inch. It's a density. As a matter of fact, 2560×1440 on a 14" notebook display is nearly identical to 5120×2880 on a 27" display.
  - indemnity 9y ago
    I'm talking about 2560x1440 on 27", as is GP, and comparing that resolution at 27" to the pixel doubled resolution at 27"? 108 PPI for the former is not HiDPI, which is my point. I'm quite aware of pixel density, but thanks for the Wikipedia definition.

jhoechtl 9y ago

HiDPI on Linux is pretty much non existent. I am telling from experience. I have booth a decent 4K external monitor and a HiDPI IPS internal display. The only setup which is ok in the sense of least horrible is Gnome mutter Wayland with experimental per monitor fractional scaling enabled. And this one is only ok if you can restrict yourself to the few ported pure GTK3 Gnome apps. Which means not that much. No Firefox. No Chrome. No Thunderbird. And the speed of fixing HiDPI on Linux has actually slowed down. Frnakly, and I am a hard core Linux OSS fan - come back in two years and check again. The Linux desktop IS dead.

denimnerd 9y ago
linux desktop is isn’t dead.
shmerl 9y ago
Linux desktop is doing fine. But I prefer to avoid GTK when possible. It's years behind Qt. Some thing like Firefox are necessary though, but it's a pity it's stuck with GTK.
saltcured 9y ago
So, what exactly is it that you expect as "HiDPI" support which is missing? As far as I can recall, it has been possible to configure the actual physical size/DPI for a monitor for many, many years. Any properly functioning X application should then be able to draw things a correct size on the screen, e.g. fonts sized in points or images and figures scaled to actual widths. I think this infrastructure may even pre-date the switch from XFree86 to Xorg. Is your complaint that there are still some applications which ignore this monitor DPI metadata or which do other pixel-based techniques? Like the previous poster, I stick to 1920x1080 on my 14-inch class Thinkpad. In my office I have dual 28-inch 4K monitors. These have identical dot pitch to my Thinkpad, so each monitor is like having a 2x2 array of my Thinkpad screens. When I made sure the monitors were set with the correct DPI, everything worked exactly as I would expect. Whatever rendered as one pixel on my laptop would also be one pixel on my workstation, and I just had 8 times more real estate on my dual monitor desktop. But, I sit further from the monitors than I do my laptop screen while also using them for much longer stretches of time. So, I adjusted the workstation to pretend it had higher DPI so that things would render a little bigger. It's been a few years, but I think I may have had to separately adjust Firefox because it has some of its own weird assumptions about fonts and DPI that I assume come from their renderer straddling several different platforms. I also had to adjust emacs and xterm to change from my decades old fixed font preferences to start using scalable fonts.

shazow 9y ago

The bad news: There's no unified HiDPI solution on Linux that works well end-to-end. The good news: You don't really need one. Bumping the font configuration fixes 80% of the scenarios, and the rest I tweak on a case-by-case basis. The good standards-conforming apps (e.g. modern terminals, browsers, etc) automatically multiply the font sizes by your screen DPI. Most desktop managers have a scale sliders for the GUI size, if you're into that. Some stragglers include Steam which recently added support for a 2x size multiplier (it's something, but not the best). You kinda get exposed to how the sausage is made, but the sausage still tastes great. Linux desktop is better than it ever was, but the road to perfection is long and eternal.

eof 9y ago
my system76 handles 4k perfectly
- gurkendoktor 9y ago
  system76 actually ships a custom daemon that makes mixed LowDPI/HiDPI setups easier to manage, and I hope other distros will follow suit: https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234 https://elementaryos.stackexchange.com/a/14234

thomastjeffery 9y ago

Most apps are written in GTK or Qt, which do scaling well. The main issue is that scaling can't really be done on a per-display basis.

MightySCollins 9y ago

I wish everything just used wayland and scaled correctly I am sick of having to launch chrome with an environment variable so it can run on one screen and having another instance for another. Also silly things like file dialogs not fitting. It's annoying when you look and the issues are all from years ago and still not fixed.

merb 9y ago

The biggest problem in linux is not directly HiDPI. HiDPI works (mostly). However if you can't use wayland you will have a problem when you need the following: Multiple monitors with different screen resultions. Lets say your laptop has 4k and you use two external monitors with 1080p than it gets tricky with older wayland or x.org. However on later stable/edge channels most things are probably better than when I tested this and I even have a colleague which has a 13" xps with ubuntu which works pretty will with its docking station.

nitrogen 9y ago
If you have a good GPU you can use the xrandr commandline tool to set up display scaling, so your secondary low-DPI screen is rendered at high DPI and scaled down. Then you only need one DPI setting for your DE.
- merb 9y ago
  Well, it‘s good that it „could“ work, however i expect it to work without searching the Internet for xrandr configs. (And as said newer Weston/Wayland work way better)
  - nitrogen 9y ago
    I agree; I post the fact that its possible more as a condemnation of the UI for not getting it right.

sridca 9y ago

I have a Thinkpad P71 and I run NixOS on it. Works great with a 5k monitor, and DPI is perfect.

SZJX 9y ago

It's actually quite OK, with just some minor annoyances. Three scenarios for my use case: 1. Use the laptop screen only. This is easy. Just change the DPI value in my ~/.Xprofile and everything is solved. 2. Use external monitors only. Just use the default DPI value. 3. Use laptop screen in combination with external monitors. This doesn't occur hat often. But when I have to do this, there are also some ways to make it work. You can refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI for some reference. - The first way is to increase the DPI in ~/.Xprofile and actually scale up the external monitor instead. I don't like this method since the external monitor just looks blurry for some reason. - Or you can keep the DPI and downscale your internal monitor. - Or, and this is what I do currently, use apps that support manually setting DPI in their settings, e.g. Firefox and Thunderbird, on the laptop display. You can also manually change font sizes of apps that you're going to use on the laptop display. This is a bit inconvenient but the display result will look totally natural.