4 ms·

Wayland still doesn't handle fractional scaling as well as x11 (at least for my laptop) and the text blurriness with fractional scaling is really a show stopper

Wayland still doesn't handle fractional scaling as well as x11 (at least for my laptop) and the text blurriness with fractional scaling is really a show stopper. X11 just works though. Hopefully they will iron out the last of the bugs and this 10 year project will finally achieve its potential.

reactor 5y ago
I had to upgrade Kernel 5.15 to get 4K multi monitor fractional scaling working with Ubuntu on Wayland. But it works quite well now.
tuetuopay 5y ago
Funny, fractional scaling is precisely what convinced me about wayland. Especially with mixed ratios, like you easily get when plugging a laptop to an external screen. My work laptop has a 1080p 14" screen at 1.00 and it's connected to the office's 4K 32" screens with a 1.35 factor, it just works. Good luck getting it to work that well on X11.
- resonious 5y ago
  Same here. I simply cold not get fractional scaling working comfortably on X11 and that's why I've been on Wayland for years now. The cases where fractional scaling doesn't work on Wayland are when you're running an app through XWayland. In those cases, I'd just find an alternative that works with Wayland. That's also what lead me to switch to Firefox full-time - Chromium's Wayland support lagged behind quite a bit.
- salamandersauce 5y ago
  Ubuntu's version of GNOME X11 handles it pretty well. You can workaround it similarly in other DEs/WMs by mucking around with xrandr (I forget exactly). I have an Nvidia card and last time I tried Wayland was just not usable. I also hate how at this point we have 3 choices for Wayland WMs compared to what is probably hundreds for X11. I did get frustrated with mixed DPI on Linux and just ended up replacing my 4K monitor with a 1440p one. What's also kinda sad and funny is that X11 has had from day 1 support for different DPIs on different displays. But most programs just ignore X11s DPI setting and assume it's 96ppi. It also conflicts with modern multi-monitor on Linux which essentially fakes one giant display so you can drag windows across. There is some drawbacks but if you config each monitor to be a separate X11 display with the proper DPI and use compatible programs like Alacritty it kinda just sorta works.
- mtzet 5y ago
  Theoretically, Wayland has proper support for fractional scaling, and this just works. In practice however, this only works for wayland-native applications and all applications running through XWayland will be rendered small and scaled up, which ends up looking terrible. I guess this is implementation dependent, but this is consistent across Wayland on GNOME, Sway and KDE Plasma. This is unfortunate, since many applications can scale just fine, but only through older hacks. Chrome and Electron applications will scale just fine by providing a proper DPI. Same for very old apps. GTK and QT applications will not, but they scale just fine by setting appropriate environment variables. In practice, this leads to the experience often being better on X11. I've found KDE X11 to handle this the best, with the limitation being a single global scale, only certain fractions allowed and needing to restart KDE after changing it. GNOME with Ubuntu patches and Xfce will scale everything x2 and use RandR to provide a higher virtual resolution. This has performance costs and messes with cursor speed (measured in pixels) but otherwise also produces good results.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    Why is it surprising (or even Wayland’s fault) that X apps don’t have proper fractional scaling under Wayland (or anywhere)? Like it is quite clearly the fault of X, isn’t it?
    - mateuszf 5y ago
      It's also an incentive for the apps to use Wayland which is a good thing.
      - xvilka 5y ago
        Some frameworks don't have support for Wayland. So it might be not up to the program authors. World is not limited to GTK and Qt. One such example is Java.
        mateuszf 5y ago
        The X11 support in Java wasn't so good either AFAIR. Remember having problems with AWT/Swing apps in tiling window managers in the past. Also, there is some ongoing work on Wayland in Java - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wakefield-OpenJDK-Java-Wayland https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wakefiel...

reactor 5y ago

I had to upgrade Kernel 5.15 to get 4K multi monitor fractional scaling working with Ubuntu on Wayland. But it works quite well now.

tuetuopay 5y ago

Funny, fractional scaling is precisely what convinced me about wayland. Especially with mixed ratios, like you easily get when plugging a laptop to an external screen. My work laptop has a 1080p 14" screen at 1.00 and it's connected to the office's 4K 32" screens with a 1.35 factor, it just works. Good luck getting it to work that well on X11.

resonious 5y ago
Same here. I simply cold not get fractional scaling working comfortably on X11 and that's why I've been on Wayland for years now. The cases where fractional scaling doesn't work on Wayland are when you're running an app through XWayland. In those cases, I'd just find an alternative that works with Wayland. That's also what lead me to switch to Firefox full-time - Chromium's Wayland support lagged behind quite a bit.
salamandersauce 5y ago
Ubuntu's version of GNOME X11 handles it pretty well. You can workaround it similarly in other DEs/WMs by mucking around with xrandr (I forget exactly). I have an Nvidia card and last time I tried Wayland was just not usable. I also hate how at this point we have 3 choices for Wayland WMs compared to what is probably hundreds for X11. I did get frustrated with mixed DPI on Linux and just ended up replacing my 4K monitor with a 1440p one. What's also kinda sad and funny is that X11 has had from day 1 support for different DPIs on different displays. But most programs just ignore X11s DPI setting and assume it's 96ppi. It also conflicts with modern multi-monitor on Linux which essentially fakes one giant display so you can drag windows across. There is some drawbacks but if you config each monitor to be a separate X11 display with the proper DPI and use compatible programs like Alacritty it kinda just sorta works.
mtzet 5y ago
Theoretically, Wayland has proper support for fractional scaling, and this just works. In practice however, this only works for wayland-native applications and all applications running through XWayland will be rendered small and scaled up, which ends up looking terrible. I guess this is implementation dependent, but this is consistent across Wayland on GNOME, Sway and KDE Plasma. This is unfortunate, since many applications can scale just fine, but only through older hacks. Chrome and Electron applications will scale just fine by providing a proper DPI. Same for very old apps. GTK and QT applications will not, but they scale just fine by setting appropriate environment variables. In practice, this leads to the experience often being better on X11. I've found KDE X11 to handle this the best, with the limitation being a single global scale, only certain fractions allowed and needing to restart KDE after changing it. GNOME with Ubuntu patches and Xfce will scale everything x2 and use RandR to provide a higher virtual resolution. This has performance costs and messes with cursor speed (measured in pixels) but otherwise also produces good results.
- kaba0 5y ago
  Why is it surprising (or even Wayland’s fault) that X apps don’t have proper fractional scaling under Wayland (or anywhere)? Like it is quite clearly the fault of X, isn’t it?
  - mateuszf 5y ago
    It's also an incentive for the apps to use Wayland which is a good thing.
    - xvilka 5y ago
      Some frameworks don't have support for Wayland. So it might be not up to the program authors. World is not limited to GTK and Qt. One such example is Java.
      - mateuszf 5y ago
        The X11 support in Java wasn't so good either AFAIR. Remember having problems with AWT/Swing apps in tiling window managers in the past. Also, there is some ongoing work on Wayland in Java - https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wakefield-OpenJDK-Java-Wayland https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wakefiel...