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As an owner of a HiDPI laptop, I'm here to tell you that if you want to connect it to an external monitor, you will be disappointed in Linux. For a laptop-monit

As an owner of a HiDPI laptop, I'm here to tell you that if you want to connect it to an external monitor, you will be disappointed in Linux. For a laptop-monitor combination in Linux, standard resolution is absolutely the way to go. This isn't a rant. Mad, mad respect for Linux here, and longtime Linux user. KDE only offers a single scaling factor, so you must scale the laptop and the external screens identically. That means all at 2:1, or 1.5:1, or what have you -- this means one of your screens will be scaled improperly (too fine or too large). Gnome does the same, I believe. I have heard Pop_OS can scale monitors differently but didn't try it.

cturtle 6y ago
Why not change the resolution on the laptop? Both my laptop and monitor have the same screen resolution, but I have configured Cinnamon to set the laptop display to only 1920x1080 when the external monitor is attached so its more readable at a distance. When unplugging hdmi the laptop display switches back to full resolution automatically.
izacus 6y ago
Nope, GNOME actually supports mixed scaling with Wayland and works just fine on my Dell XPS 13. I regularly connect a normal DPI external monitor and things scale just fine across both HiDPI internal and normal DPI external screen.
chrismorgan 6y ago
My understanding (not based in any experience, though I hope to get some this year) is that this is a limitation of X11, but that Wayland properly supports per-screen scaling (so long as the compositor does).
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Get them the same resolution. I have a Dell laptop with Ubuntu Mate and two 4k screens. It has been running wonderfully for at least five years. I'd never go back to 1080.
commoner 6y ago
The following Linux distributions support different scaling factors on different displays by default: Pop!_OS, Ubuntu (and GNOME-based derivatives), Linux Mint. Arch Linux, Manjaro, and all distributions using GNOME + Wayland can also enable mixed scaling with a quick setting change. Pop!_OS (developed by System76) created its own HiDPI daemon to handle HiDPI and LoDPI displays on X11 at the same time: https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon https://blog.system76.com/post/174414833678/all-about-the-hidpi-daemon https://blog.system76.com/post/174414833678/all-about-the-hi... It is preinstalled on all System76 computers and enabled by default. Ubuntu's fork of the Mutter display manager (used by its fork of GNOME) includes a patch to handle different display resolutions for HiDPI and LoDPI displays on X11: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mutter/+bug/1820850 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mutter/+bug/182085... Ubuntu and all of its GNOME-based derivatives include this patch, unless it is specifically excluded by the maintainers. Linux Mint implemented fractional display scaling, with different settings for each display, in Cinnamon 4.6: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3858 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3858 Arch Linux and Manjaro users can also choose Cinnamon as the desktop environment for the same features. If you are using a GNOME on X11 on Manjaro, you can install the mutter-x11-scaling package to replace Mutter with a version that includes Ubuntu's changes: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/extra/mutter-x11-scaling/-/tree/master https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/extra/mutter-x11-scaling... https://github.com/puxplaying/mutter-x11-scaling https://github.com/puxplaying/mutter-x11-scaling Finally, if you are using GNOME on Wayland, mixed scaling is already supported. To enable fractional scaling, activate the "scale-monitor-framebuffer" setting: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GNOME https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GNOME On Wayland, scaled applications that do not use GTK 3+ or Qt 5+ may appear blurry. This affects all Electron applications. X11 does not have the same issue, but Wayland is generally smoother and more stable than X11.

cturtle 6y ago

Why not change the resolution on the laptop? Both my laptop and monitor have the same screen resolution, but I have configured Cinnamon to set the laptop display to only 1920x1080 when the external monitor is attached so its more readable at a distance. When unplugging hdmi the laptop display switches back to full resolution automatically.

izacus 6y ago

Nope, GNOME actually supports mixed scaling with Wayland and works just fine on my Dell XPS 13. I regularly connect a normal DPI external monitor and things scale just fine across both HiDPI internal and normal DPI external screen.

chrismorgan 6y ago

My understanding (not based in any experience, though I hope to get some this year) is that this is a limitation of X11, but that Wayland properly supports per-screen scaling (so long as the compositor does).

mixmastamyk 6y ago

Get them the same resolution. I have a Dell laptop with Ubuntu Mate and two 4k screens. It has been running wonderfully for at least five years. I'd never go back to 1080.

commoner 6y ago

The following Linux distributions support different scaling factors on different displays by default: Pop!_OS, Ubuntu (and GNOME-based derivatives), Linux Mint. Arch Linux, Manjaro, and all distributions using GNOME + Wayland can also enable mixed scaling with a quick setting change. Pop!_OS (developed by System76) created its own HiDPI daemon to handle HiDPI and LoDPI displays on X11 at the same time: https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon https://github.com/pop-os/hidpi-daemon https://blog.system76.com/post/174414833678/all-about-the-hidpi-daemon https://blog.system76.com/post/174414833678/all-about-the-hi... It is preinstalled on all System76 computers and enabled by default. Ubuntu's fork of the Mutter display manager (used by its fork of GNOME) includes a patch to handle different display resolutions for HiDPI and LoDPI displays on X11: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mutter/+bug/1820850 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mutter/+bug/182085... Ubuntu and all of its GNOME-based derivatives include this patch, unless it is specifically excluded by the maintainers. Linux Mint implemented fractional display scaling, with different settings for each display, in Cinnamon 4.6: https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3858 https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3858 Arch Linux and Manjaro users can also choose Cinnamon as the desktop environment for the same features. If you are using a GNOME on X11 on Manjaro, you can install the mutter-x11-scaling package to replace Mutter with a version that includes Ubuntu's changes: https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/extra/mutter-x11-scaling/-/tree/master https://gitlab.manjaro.org/packages/extra/mutter-x11-scaling... https://github.com/puxplaying/mutter-x11-scaling https://github.com/puxplaying/mutter-x11-scaling Finally, if you are using GNOME on Wayland, mixed scaling is already supported. To enable fractional scaling, activate the "scale-monitor-framebuffer" setting: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GNOME https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GNOME On Wayland, scaled applications that do not use GTK 3+ or Qt 5+ may appear blurry. This affects all Electron applications. X11 does not have the same issue, but Wayland is generally smoother and more stable than X11.