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> How long till Linux or Gnome supports these types of laptops? Approximately one eternity. Desktop Linux still doesn't support: - Using different DPI on a di

> How long till Linux or Gnome supports these types of laptops? Approximately one eternity. Desktop Linux still doesn't support: - Using different DPI on a different screen in a multi-monitor setup (common case is when you connect a low-dpi monitor to a high-dpi laptop) - Color depth of more than 8 bits per channel - Color management in general, needed for wide-gamut displays - Any kind of HDR functionality And hardware that has these features that Linux can't make use of due to a series of unfortunate architectural decisions has existed for a long time.

Lio 5y ago
> Using different DPI on a different screen in a multi-monitor setup (common case is when you connect a low-dpi monitor to a high-dpi laptop) Linux definitely does support this. I use this exact feature with Gnome and Wayland daily to combine a 4K XPS13 with a 27” 1440p monitor.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  I wasn't able to get it to work as recently as two years ago. Would you share a link to your recipe?
  - vetinari 5y ago
    Just use wayland, done.
    - Too 5y ago
      Would have loved to agree, but unfortunately using nvidia.
  - LukeShu 5y ago
    I did a write-up of the low-levels of how it works on Xorg: https://reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/c8hgt8/my_laptop_has_a_high_dpi_and_im_currently_looking/esn0x71/ https://reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/c8hgt8/my_laptop_has... Missing from that: - Gnome actually does the scaling in the compositor, not in the X server itself. - Most desktop environments should be doing all that for you. At the time I wrote that (over 2 years ago), in Gnome you had to go in to an advanced settings menu and enable "experimental fractional scaling"; I'm not sure if that's still true today. - Some things pick up the DPI from the XSETTINGS protocol, not from the XRDB. Specifically, parts of Java's AWT/Swing do this. But other parts use the XRDB. And they conflict with eachother. When I last looked at Swing (April-ish 2020) it was impossible to get it to do the right thing on X11 (I was working on a patch, but then I had some life disruptions and never came back to it).
  - Lio 5y ago
    I don't have a recipe as such I just installed Fedora running Wayland and Gnome and it just works out of the box. If you want something custom I guess I'd suggest looking at what Fedora uses out of the box. I'm running on an all Intel XPS13 9370 if that helps.
- aldebran 5y ago
  Does it work out of the box or do you need to do something specific. I have a custom built desktop with a 4k and a 1080p monitor. I can get one of them to look good. :( I’m on mint.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    I got this working by fiddling with `xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 1.3x1.3` on the command line.
  - Lio 5y ago
    Works out of the box for me since moving to Fedora running Wayland and Gnome. I just set one monitor to 100% and the other (4k) to 200%. In fact I think that choice was originally made for me but you can change it. When I first started using it a couple of years ago you'd get old artifacts when moving a window from one monitor to another. e.g. the mouse pointer could be the wrong size. Over the years, like many things on Linux, it's got more polished. Now it just works.
- wildrhythms 5y ago
  Linux supports this, but applications on Linux may not (or not gracefully). I've found Chrome on Ubuntu (GNOME with Wayland) just doesn't adjust its scale when being dragged across displays with differing UI scaling settings. I don't have this problem on Windows or Mac OS.
  - kirbyfan64sos 5y ago
    Maybe try running Chrome with the in-development native Wayland backend (--ozone-platform=wayland)?
zucker42 5y ago
> Using different DPI on a different screen in a multi-monitor setup (common case is when you connect a low-dpi monitor to a high-dpi laptop) Isn't this supported by Wayland (and AFAIK it has for a while now)?
- smallerfish 5y ago
  It is. Right now your mileage will vary depending on graphics driver, compositor (KDE and Gnome have their own), etc - but for me it worked pretty well. Wayland's not _quite_ polished.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Wayland itself functions quite well in my experience, but if you run anything Nvidia or anything with the X11 compatibility layer, you're in for the rare but annoying bug to slip through.
dijit 5y ago
All of this is supported by wayland, caveat: nvidia and wayland do not play nicely at all.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  Wayland does not support color management or HDR.
  - dijit 5y ago
    gammastep can control wayland colour temperatures;. Other compositors and applications can access the same protocols. Wayland (proto) supports 16bits per colour. (Much more than HDRs 10 bit) https://github.com/wayland-project/wayland/blob/6741dafbf7a50e8a3f3b7667b4fecbf7c55f21ff/protocol/wayland.xml https://github.com/wayland-project/wayland/blob/6741dafbf7a5... It’s up to the compositor to enable them.
    - akvadrako 5y ago
      Color temperature is not what's being talked about here; that's just a small subset of color management. HDR is also not about bits, but color space, which requires profile support. Even 10 bit support is another issue. A few composers have alpha support recently, but it isn't something you can expect to use.
formerly_proven 5y ago
Linux desktops support color management to approximately the same extent Windows does, which is to say "annoying for professional users with specific applications, non-existent otherwise".
- dTal 5y ago
  Uh, you can load ICC profiles on both Linux and Windows. On my Thinkpad X201 it was a hard requirement if you didn't want your eyes to bleed, without the profile it was like staring into a bug zapper it was so blue.
  - formerly_proven 5y ago
    This is a super common misunderstanding. When you load an ICC profile into "the system", sometimes all the colors everywhere change, because many ICC profiles contain (non-standard) RGB gamma ramps. Those are 1D per-channel LUTs - the same ballpark as changing the "R G B" values in a monitor's OSD; they can't do color-space conversions. The reason this is done is essentially to reduce numerical artifacts when a color-managed application uses the profile. [1] The reason why it's global is because gamma ramps are part of the scanout system (display interface) in a graphics adapter. This effect makes it look like the entire system is color-managed when in fact the opposite is true. [1] Any profile that has been created with gamma ramps has to be used system wide and specified in color-managed applications, because the standard color transforms in the profile are calculated to be correct when the gamma ramps are in place. If you skip either step, you'll get wrong results.
    - dTal 5y ago
      Today I learned! Thanks.
    - csdvrx 5y ago
      Wouldn't it be possible to do a vector product with the wrong RGB gamma ramp to get a resulting color profile that would work system-wide? (as it may be easier to change the color profile than the RGB gamma ramp)

Lio 5y ago

> Using different DPI on a different screen in a multi-monitor setup (common case is when you connect a low-dpi monitor to a high-dpi laptop) Linux definitely does support this. I use this exact feature with Gnome and Wayland daily to combine a 4K XPS13 with a 27” 1440p monitor.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
I wasn't able to get it to work as recently as two years ago. Would you share a link to your recipe?
- vetinari 5y ago
  Just use wayland, done.
  - Too 5y ago
    Would have loved to agree, but unfortunately using nvidia.
- LukeShu 5y ago
  I did a write-up of the low-levels of how it works on Xorg: https://reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/c8hgt8/my_laptop_has_a_high_dpi_and_im_currently_looking/esn0x71/ https://reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/c8hgt8/my_laptop_has... Missing from that: - Gnome actually does the scaling in the compositor, not in the X server itself. - Most desktop environments should be doing all that for you. At the time I wrote that (over 2 years ago), in Gnome you had to go in to an advanced settings menu and enable "experimental fractional scaling"; I'm not sure if that's still true today. - Some things pick up the DPI from the XSETTINGS protocol, not from the XRDB. Specifically, parts of Java's AWT/Swing do this. But other parts use the XRDB. And they conflict with eachother. When I last looked at Swing (April-ish 2020) it was impossible to get it to do the right thing on X11 (I was working on a patch, but then I had some life disruptions and never came back to it).
- Lio 5y ago
  I don't have a recipe as such I just installed Fedora running Wayland and Gnome and it just works out of the box. If you want something custom I guess I'd suggest looking at what Fedora uses out of the box. I'm running on an all Intel XPS13 9370 if that helps.
aldebran 5y ago
Does it work out of the box or do you need to do something specific. I have a custom built desktop with a 4k and a 1080p monitor. I can get one of them to look good. :( I’m on mint.
- fragmede 5y ago
  I got this working by fiddling with `xrandr --output HDMI1 --scale 1.3x1.3` on the command line.
- Lio 5y ago
  Works out of the box for me since moving to Fedora running Wayland and Gnome. I just set one monitor to 100% and the other (4k) to 200%. In fact I think that choice was originally made for me but you can change it. When I first started using it a couple of years ago you'd get old artifacts when moving a window from one monitor to another. e.g. the mouse pointer could be the wrong size. Over the years, like many things on Linux, it's got more polished. Now it just works.
wildrhythms 5y ago
Linux supports this, but applications on Linux may not (or not gracefully). I've found Chrome on Ubuntu (GNOME with Wayland) just doesn't adjust its scale when being dragged across displays with differing UI scaling settings. I don't have this problem on Windows or Mac OS.
- kirbyfan64sos 5y ago
  Maybe try running Chrome with the in-development native Wayland backend (--ozone-platform=wayland)?

zucker42 5y ago

> Using different DPI on a different screen in a multi-monitor setup (common case is when you connect a low-dpi monitor to a high-dpi laptop) Isn't this supported by Wayland (and AFAIK it has for a while now)?

smallerfish 5y ago
It is. Right now your mileage will vary depending on graphics driver, compositor (KDE and Gnome have their own), etc - but for me it worked pretty well. Wayland's not _quite_ polished.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Wayland itself functions quite well in my experience, but if you run anything Nvidia or anything with the X11 compatibility layer, you're in for the rare but annoying bug to slip through.

dijit 5y ago

All of this is supported by wayland, caveat: nvidia and wayland do not play nicely at all.

akvadrako 5y ago
Wayland does not support color management or HDR.
- dijit 5y ago
  gammastep can control wayland colour temperatures;. Other compositors and applications can access the same protocols. Wayland (proto) supports 16bits per colour. (Much more than HDRs 10 bit) https://github.com/wayland-project/wayland/blob/6741dafbf7a50e8a3f3b7667b4fecbf7c55f21ff/protocol/wayland.xml https://github.com/wayland-project/wayland/blob/6741dafbf7a5... It’s up to the compositor to enable them.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    Color temperature is not what's being talked about here; that's just a small subset of color management. HDR is also not about bits, but color space, which requires profile support. Even 10 bit support is another issue. A few composers have alpha support recently, but it isn't something you can expect to use.

formerly_proven 5y ago

Linux desktops support color management to approximately the same extent Windows does, which is to say "annoying for professional users with specific applications, non-existent otherwise".

dTal 5y ago
Uh, you can load ICC profiles on both Linux and Windows. On my Thinkpad X201 it was a hard requirement if you didn't want your eyes to bleed, without the profile it was like staring into a bug zapper it was so blue.
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  This is a super common misunderstanding. When you load an ICC profile into "the system", sometimes all the colors everywhere change, because many ICC profiles contain (non-standard) RGB gamma ramps. Those are 1D per-channel LUTs - the same ballpark as changing the "R G B" values in a monitor's OSD; they can't do color-space conversions. The reason this is done is essentially to reduce numerical artifacts when a color-managed application uses the profile. [1] The reason why it's global is because gamma ramps are part of the scanout system (display interface) in a graphics adapter. This effect makes it look like the entire system is color-managed when in fact the opposite is true. [1] Any profile that has been created with gamma ramps has to be used system wide and specified in color-managed applications, because the standard color transforms in the profile are calculated to be correct when the gamma ramps are in place. If you skip either step, you'll get wrong results.
  - dTal 5y ago
    Today I learned! Thanks.
  - csdvrx 5y ago
    Wouldn't it be possible to do a vector product with the wrong RGB gamma ramp to get a resulting color profile that would work system-wide? (as it may be easier to change the color profile than the RGB gamma ramp)