5 ms·

> Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with

> Hard disagree. On a 15.6" 1080p really is sufficient. Considering what I've recently learned about the fractional scaling mess, I would only buy laptops with a 1440p or 4K display because they don't need fractional scaling. I really wish there were more 24 inch 4K or 27 inch 5K monitors on the market and not the 27 inch 4K mess we're getting. I'm not sure what monitor manufacturers are thinking.

viraptor 5y ago
What do you mean by "need fractional scaling"? This really depends on what you prefer, but I'm on 15" with 100% scale and enjoy it.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  Yes, I didn't take 15 inch laptops into account because I have a 14 inch laptop. See my reply here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008
chrismorgan 5y ago
15.6″ 1366×768: 100ppi. It could be improved by 90% scaling, but that doesn’t tend to work quite so well. Basically everyone uses it at 1×. 15.6″ 1920×1080 (1080p): 141ppi. Generally comfortable at 1–1.25×, most will use at 1×. 15.6″ 2560×1440 (1440p): 188ppi. Generally comfortable at 1.33–1.75×, most will use at 1.5×. Definitely uncomfortable at both 1× and 2×. If you don’t like fractional scaling, you don’t want 1440p. 15.6″ 3840×2160 (4K): 282ppi. Generally comfortable at 2–2.5×, most will use at 2×. These figures I’m suggesting are aiming for about 110–140dpi. I have a 15.6″ 2560×1440 screen, and 1.5× scaling mostly works very well, basically perfectly under Windows which I never use and with only minor issues under Linux/Sway with high-DPI XWayland patches once I’ve manually intervened to fix a few variously broken things.
- ayushnix 5y ago
  Hmm, I guess I didn't think about the 15.6 inch size in laptops. I have a 14 inch laptop so I was thinking in terms of that size. 1080p on my laptop needs 1.2 — 1.3 scaling to look "normal". I know people dismiss this as personal taste but 1) IINM, Windows defaults to 125% automatically on such a display and 2) I have a hard time reading text without scaling my 14 inch 1080p display. Sure, people, resort to scaling just the fonts but everything looks out of place if you do that. The fonts are big but the UI elements are still small. Personally, I chose to compromise as well by scaling just the fonts on SwayWM because fractional scaling introduces slightly noticeable degradation of font quality which is unacceptable to me. But yeah, in that case, 4K display on a laptop looks like a safe bet so I would only go for that in the future. Thanks.
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    14″ is an uncomfortable size for integral scaling: past 1366×768 (112ppi), all of the popular sizes call for fractional scaling: in my rough guide of 110–140ppi, that’s about 110–140% for 1080p (so the 125% you cited is good), about 150–190% for 1440p, and about 225–285% for 4K. (13.3″ works better: 100% for 1366×768, 120–150% for 1080p so no integer there, 160–200% for 1440p, 240–300% for 4K.) Fractional scaling in Sway doesn’t degrade quality in any way in Wayland windows: it leaves the scaling to the app to execute, and I haven’t come across a single app getting it wrong. Text will be rendered perfectly. Pixel-precise stuff can be a tad funny, e.g. a 1px border on an element in Firefox will be rendered as one or two device pixels in most contexts. But then there’s anything still using X11: without the high-DPI patches, XWayland renders at 1× and scales it up so that it’ll look bad for any scale higher than one, whether fractional or integral. With the patches, you get to decide what to do. On my 1440p 15.6″ display, I have scale 1.5 and xwayland scale 3, which normally works very well, but I do have to drop it to 1 occasionally for some things due to apps that don’t do scaling and the fact that the patches are still imperfect and you can actually soft-lock apps when they try to open certain windows (mostly popups, including menus) until you drop the scale.
    - ayushnix 5y ago
      > Fractional scaling in Sway doesn’t degrade quality in any way in Wayland windows: it leaves the scaling to the app to execute, and I haven’t come across a single app getting it wrong. Funny you say that considering Firefox goes haywire if you use it on Sway with fractional scaling. https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6432 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6432 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6426 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6426 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6147 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6147 Other Qt apps like Qterminal are also not able to show tooltips normally if you enable scaling. Some Qt apps which I absolutely adore like Spectacle and Gwenview don't work at all though this might be a different issue. > But then there’s anything still using X11: without the high-DPI patches, XWayland renders at 1× and scales it up so that it’ll look bad for any scale higher than one, whether fractional or integral. With the patches, you get to decide what to do. The unofficial XWayland HiDPI patches? Yeah, I'm not gonna use them if they're official. It's a pain to compile and build complex packages like these. The AUR is fine for small and casual packages with a few dependencies but nothing complex, I feel.

viraptor 5y ago

What do you mean by "need fractional scaling"? This really depends on what you prefer, but I'm on 15" with 100% scale and enjoy it.

ayushnix 5y ago
Yes, I didn't take 15 inch laptops into account because I have a 14 inch laptop. See my reply here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28376008

chrismorgan 5y ago

15.6″ 1366×768: 100ppi. It could be improved by 90% scaling, but that doesn’t tend to work quite so well. Basically everyone uses it at 1×. 15.6″ 1920×1080 (1080p): 141ppi. Generally comfortable at 1–1.25×, most will use at 1×. 15.6″ 2560×1440 (1440p): 188ppi. Generally comfortable at 1.33–1.75×, most will use at 1.5×. Definitely uncomfortable at both 1× and 2×. If you don’t like fractional scaling, you don’t want 1440p. 15.6″ 3840×2160 (4K): 282ppi. Generally comfortable at 2–2.5×, most will use at 2×. These figures I’m suggesting are aiming for about 110–140dpi. I have a 15.6″ 2560×1440 screen, and 1.5× scaling mostly works very well, basically perfectly under Windows which I never use and with only minor issues under Linux/Sway with high-DPI XWayland patches once I’ve manually intervened to fix a few variously broken things.

ayushnix 5y ago
Hmm, I guess I didn't think about the 15.6 inch size in laptops. I have a 14 inch laptop so I was thinking in terms of that size. 1080p on my laptop needs 1.2 — 1.3 scaling to look "normal". I know people dismiss this as personal taste but 1) IINM, Windows defaults to 125% automatically on such a display and 2) I have a hard time reading text without scaling my 14 inch 1080p display. Sure, people, resort to scaling just the fonts but everything looks out of place if you do that. The fonts are big but the UI elements are still small. Personally, I chose to compromise as well by scaling just the fonts on SwayWM because fractional scaling introduces slightly noticeable degradation of font quality which is unacceptable to me. But yeah, in that case, 4K display on a laptop looks like a safe bet so I would only go for that in the future. Thanks.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  14″ is an uncomfortable size for integral scaling: past 1366×768 (112ppi), all of the popular sizes call for fractional scaling: in my rough guide of 110–140ppi, that’s about 110–140% for 1080p (so the 125% you cited is good), about 150–190% for 1440p, and about 225–285% for 4K. (13.3″ works better: 100% for 1366×768, 120–150% for 1080p so no integer there, 160–200% for 1440p, 240–300% for 4K.) Fractional scaling in Sway doesn’t degrade quality in any way in Wayland windows: it leaves the scaling to the app to execute, and I haven’t come across a single app getting it wrong. Text will be rendered perfectly. Pixel-precise stuff can be a tad funny, e.g. a 1px border on an element in Firefox will be rendered as one or two device pixels in most contexts. But then there’s anything still using X11: without the high-DPI patches, XWayland renders at 1× and scales it up so that it’ll look bad for any scale higher than one, whether fractional or integral. With the patches, you get to decide what to do. On my 1440p 15.6″ display, I have scale 1.5 and xwayland scale 3, which normally works very well, but I do have to drop it to 1 occasionally for some things due to apps that don’t do scaling and the fact that the patches are still imperfect and you can actually soft-lock apps when they try to open certain windows (mostly popups, including menus) until you drop the scale.
  - ayushnix 5y ago
    > Fractional scaling in Sway doesn’t degrade quality in any way in Wayland windows: it leaves the scaling to the app to execute, and I haven’t come across a single app getting it wrong. Funny you say that considering Firefox goes haywire if you use it on Sway with fractional scaling. https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6432 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6432 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6426 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6426 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6147 https://github.com/swaywm/sway/issues/6147 Other Qt apps like Qterminal are also not able to show tooltips normally if you enable scaling. Some Qt apps which I absolutely adore like Spectacle and Gwenview don't work at all though this might be a different issue. > But then there’s anything still using X11: without the high-DPI patches, XWayland renders at 1× and scales it up so that it’ll look bad for any scale higher than one, whether fractional or integral. With the patches, you get to decide what to do. The unofficial XWayland HiDPI patches? Yeah, I'm not gonna use them if they're official. It's a pain to compile and build complex packages like these. The AUR is fine for small and casual packages with a few dependencies but nothing complex, I feel.