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Hello, user with two screens with two different DPIs (and two separate resolutions as well, and one of them a giant touch-screen drawing tablet). Nice to meet y

Hello, user with two screens with two different DPIs (and two separate resolutions as well, and one of them a giant touch-screen drawing tablet). Nice to meet you, I use Arch btw. X11's handling of different DPIs is annoying but workable; there's a couple of different possible methods of handling it that have their own pros/cons. Per-monitor scaling is supported, but I personally don't like the way it's handled, so instead I just pick a happy medium scaling that works OK for both monitors. My understanding is that Wayland makes this easier, but I haven't switched over yet because I'm waiting either for GPU prices to drop or for NVidia to figure out whether it's ever going to play nice with Wayland. There are definitely pain points with Linux, but it's completely serviceable as a workstation computer, the meme is really dead at this point. If you're on a touchscreen device, Gnome's most recent release arguably has comparable if not better touch handling than Windows (admittedly not a high bar to clear, but remarkable considering how bad Linux's touchscreen support used to be). I use a Mac at work so I'll fit in with my coworkers, but outside of work I do not own a single computer with Windows installed on it. I'm not going to tell everyone to switch to Linux, there are very valid reasons why someone might not want to, including an increased technical burden. That's real, it's just not the giant hurdle that a lot of people seem to think it is. The "year of the Linux desktop" is really out of touch in my experience, modern Linux as a desktop OS is fine; it's perfectly serviceable as a professional environment for a lot of people. I use Linux in part because it makes it easier for me to get an ergonomic setup for drawing tablets, device compatibility, etc... And at some point I figured out that I don't really care what desktop Linux's market share is, because even <1% still seems to be big enough that the desktop stays usable for professional work and for more complicated device/media setups, which is all I need it to do.

stetrain 5y ago
So your answer about different DPIs is that you solve it by using a single DPI setting for both monitors? And the “year of Linux on the desktop” meme isn’t about it not being a workable desktop or workstation OS. Of course it is and many people use it as such. But it’s not a mainstream option that puts any kind of competitive pressure on the alternatives. You can’t go into Best Buy and walk out with a linux laptop/desktop that doesn’t have some proprietary layer (Chrome OS, Samsung, Google services) baked in. So yes Linux works on the desktop, but “everyone should just use Linux” isn’t a realistic answer to issues like this one from Apple.
- danShumway 5y ago
  Per-display scaling works in X11. I happen to use a single DPI setting that's an in-between for both monitors, but that's not a requirement, you can scale per-monitor if you prefer that. Wayland will handle this a bit better, but even in X11 you have options. I agree that "just use Linux" isn't an answer to privacy concerns in the mainstream, if for no other reason than that the current conversation about Apple is a conversation about phones, a platform where Linux is not currently usable. Purism/Pine phones are exciting, but they're not usable smartphone alternatives yet. Really if we want to talk about Apple's recent changes, I'm not sure any desktop OS is relevant to that conversation. My frustration here is that a lot of the people who use "year of the Linux desktop" seem to have a really outdated view of what Linux is actually like as a daily driver. HDPI scaling was a huge problem on Linux for a long time. It's a lot better now. The main barriers for Linux adoption at this point aren't technical. The barriers aren't trying to handle multiple displays, or projectors, or wifi cards, or even getting hardware -- there are multiple companies now that sell good preloaded Linux laptops. That doesn't mean the market share is magically there or that we're going to see a mass migration to Linux any time soon, but the market share is good enough that Linux gets decent support, and stable enough that Linux gives me generally fewer problems than Windows used to (that may have more to do with the quality of Windows degrading though). For a long time that wasn't the case; even until a couple of years ago I would have said that Linux was way behind the curve on touch/tablet support. That gap is pretty much gone now as far as I can see. That part of the meme that's related to grishka's "sure Linux is a workable desktop, just don't hook any monitors up to it" comment -- that part is dead as far as I'm concerned.

stetrain 5y ago

So your answer about different DPIs is that you solve it by using a single DPI setting for both monitors? And the “year of Linux on the desktop” meme isn’t about it not being a workable desktop or workstation OS. Of course it is and many people use it as such. But it’s not a mainstream option that puts any kind of competitive pressure on the alternatives. You can’t go into Best Buy and walk out with a linux laptop/desktop that doesn’t have some proprietary layer (Chrome OS, Samsung, Google services) baked in. So yes Linux works on the desktop, but “everyone should just use Linux” isn’t a realistic answer to issues like this one from Apple.

danShumway 5y ago
Per-display scaling works in X11. I happen to use a single DPI setting that's an in-between for both monitors, but that's not a requirement, you can scale per-monitor if you prefer that. Wayland will handle this a bit better, but even in X11 you have options. I agree that "just use Linux" isn't an answer to privacy concerns in the mainstream, if for no other reason than that the current conversation about Apple is a conversation about phones, a platform where Linux is not currently usable. Purism/Pine phones are exciting, but they're not usable smartphone alternatives yet. Really if we want to talk about Apple's recent changes, I'm not sure any desktop OS is relevant to that conversation. My frustration here is that a lot of the people who use "year of the Linux desktop" seem to have a really outdated view of what Linux is actually like as a daily driver. HDPI scaling was a huge problem on Linux for a long time. It's a lot better now. The main barriers for Linux adoption at this point aren't technical. The barriers aren't trying to handle multiple displays, or projectors, or wifi cards, or even getting hardware -- there are multiple companies now that sell good preloaded Linux laptops. That doesn't mean the market share is magically there or that we're going to see a mass migration to Linux any time soon, but the market share is good enough that Linux gets decent support, and stable enough that Linux gives me generally fewer problems than Windows used to (that may have more to do with the quality of Windows degrading though). For a long time that wasn't the case; even until a couple of years ago I would have said that Linux was way behind the curve on touch/tablet support. That gap is pretty much gone now as far as I can see. That part of the meme that's related to grishka's "sure Linux is a workable desktop, just don't hook any monitors up to it" comment -- that part is dead as far as I'm concerned.