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Has anyone found a good solution for non-integer screen scaling? I use Ubuntu on all of my computers, but they have modern, hi-res screens, and the default scal

by xur17 9y ago

Has anyone found a good solution for non-integer screen scaling? I use Ubuntu on all of my computers, but they have modern, hi-res screens, and the default scaling is too small. The only options are integer multiples (which is too big), or scaling the font size (which leaves window navigation, icons, etc too small).

om42 9y ago
I had switched to Wayland and it (sort of) supports fractional scaling system wide. It did work, its just some things end up being blurry (fonts are blurry) and that was too much for me. My temp workaround is using font scale at 1.4. Its good enough but I miss not having to worry about it with Wayland, especially with multiple monitors that have different resolutions. Some day Wayland support will be better, but I don't see it anytime soon.
- vetinari 9y ago
  The blurriness seems to be a bug with Xwayland: it runs the apps at @1 scale and scales them UP to the required fractional size. It should run them at the @2 scale and scale them DOWN, to preserve the sharpness. Meanwhile, the best way to achieve fractional scale is to run X11, use the nearest highest integer scale and scale it down using "xrandr --scale 1.somethingx1.something". Not very user friendly, though.
  - pritambaral 9y ago
    > Meanwhile, the best way to achieve fractional scale is to run X11, use the nearest highest integer scale and scale it down using "xrandr --scale 1.somethingx1.something". Not very user friendly, though. KDE's Kwin on X11 supports fractionally scaling displays, and is user friendly. Go to Displays -> Scale Display
    - vetinari 9y ago
      Not correctly, though. When talking about fractional scaling in Gnome, it is meant for all apps, not just GTK apps. Most apps do respect Xft.dpi, so they will scale their fonts, as the desktop environment sets it up, but not the other assets. Scaling all the other assets is the issue, not just the font rendering. So yes, Qt apps in KDE do work correctly, (KDE is seting their QT_*_SCALE env variables). It does not work with GTK apps. Similarly, GTK apps do work correctly with fractional scaling in Gnome, but Qt apps do not, because Gnome doesn't set QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE=0 and QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS like KDE does. Qt apps in Gnome look broken exactly like GTK apps look broken in KDE. Proper fractional scaling means scaling all apps, not just apps made using single framework.
pritambaral 9y ago
KDE supports non-integer screen scaling since I first needed. Three years ago to now, on the laptop I'm typing on (X250), my display scale hasn't changed from 1.2x, and my font dpi hasn't changed from 120. Never had any scaling issues.
e12e 9y ago
Set the dpi? A caveat, I'm not sure if setting different dpi across multiple monitors really work. https://askubuntu.com/questions/197828/how-to-find-and-change-the-screen-dpi#272172 https://askubuntu.com/questions/197828/how-to-find-and-chang... See also: http://blog.jamiek.it/2015/04/manually-fixing-multiple-screens-with.html?m=1 http://blog.jamiek.it/2015/04/manually-fixing-multiple-scree... (i currently have two HD monitors, and/or stand alone laptop monitors, so same scaling for multiple screens isn't really an issue). Please reply if this (doesn't) help.

by xur17 9y ago

om42 9y ago

I had switched to Wayland and it (sort of) supports fractional scaling system wide. It did work, its just some things end up being blurry (fonts are blurry) and that was too much for me. My temp workaround is using font scale at 1.4. Its good enough but I miss not having to worry about it with Wayland, especially with multiple monitors that have different resolutions. Some day Wayland support will be better, but I don't see it anytime soon.

vetinari 9y ago
The blurriness seems to be a bug with Xwayland: it runs the apps at @1 scale and scales them UP to the required fractional size. It should run them at the @2 scale and scale them DOWN, to preserve the sharpness. Meanwhile, the best way to achieve fractional scale is to run X11, use the nearest highest integer scale and scale it down using "xrandr --scale 1.somethingx1.something". Not very user friendly, though.
- pritambaral 9y ago
  > Meanwhile, the best way to achieve fractional scale is to run X11, use the nearest highest integer scale and scale it down using "xrandr --scale 1.somethingx1.something". Not very user friendly, though. KDE's Kwin on X11 supports fractionally scaling displays, and is user friendly. Go to Displays -> Scale Display
  - vetinari 9y ago
    Not correctly, though. When talking about fractional scaling in Gnome, it is meant for all apps, not just GTK apps. Most apps do respect Xft.dpi, so they will scale their fonts, as the desktop environment sets it up, but not the other assets. Scaling all the other assets is the issue, not just the font rendering. So yes, Qt apps in KDE do work correctly, (KDE is seting their QT_*_SCALE env variables). It does not work with GTK apps. Similarly, GTK apps do work correctly with fractional scaling in Gnome, but Qt apps do not, because Gnome doesn't set QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE=0 and QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS like KDE does. Qt apps in Gnome look broken exactly like GTK apps look broken in KDE. Proper fractional scaling means scaling all apps, not just apps made using single framework.

pritambaral 9y ago

KDE supports non-integer screen scaling since I first needed. Three years ago to now, on the laptop I'm typing on (X250), my display scale hasn't changed from 1.2x, and my font dpi hasn't changed from 120. Never had any scaling issues.

e12e 9y ago

Set the dpi? A caveat, I'm not sure if setting different dpi across multiple monitors really work. https://askubuntu.com/questions/197828/how-to-find-and-change-the-screen-dpi#272172 https://askubuntu.com/questions/197828/how-to-find-and-chang... See also: http://blog.jamiek.it/2015/04/manually-fixing-multiple-screens-with.html?m=1 http://blog.jamiek.it/2015/04/manually-fixing-multiple-scree... (i currently have two HD monitors, and/or stand alone laptop monitors, so same scaling for multiple screens isn't really an issue). Please reply if this (doesn't) help.