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Hi - Linux still has spotty fractional scaling support. It would be nice to have a display option that is either usable without fractional scaling (1920x1200) o

Hi - Linux still has spotty fractional scaling support. It would be nice to have a display option that is either usable without fractional scaling (1920x1200) or one that works with 2x scaling (3840x2400).

tristan957 3y ago
Linux support will definitely get better within the next year, but yeah this is my biggest pain point. Electron and other XWayland apps look terrible. Is there some environment variable that I can set to launch Electron apps with the correct command line arguments for Wayland? Edit: Looks like I found what I am looking for: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/environment-variables#electron_ozone_platform_hint-linux https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/environment-varia.... Electron apps are still blurry though. Hmm... Also, seems like I need to expose something to Electron apps that are packaged in Flatpak. Needs more research.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  Use a better DE. KDE allows not scaling xwayland apps, and Hyprland does too. Just set Xft.dpi to let it scale the old fashioned way. Electron can be started with wayland but it's often buggy.
  - tristan957 3y ago
    GNOME meets all my needs except this one, so I think I will stay here. Definitely looking for a less drastic solution.
- vetinari 3y ago
  Many electron apps either ignore the ozone flags, or straight up ship with ancient electron, that doesn't support ozone/wayland at all. The only way forward is bug the maintainers of the apps to do the right thing and support wayland properly. Electron itself does.
  - tristan957 3y ago
    Slack seems to work great with Wayland, so props to them. VSCode and Discord were giving me trouble however. Thanks for your insight.
ctsdownloads 3y ago
It's on the road to improve, as GNOME continues work here. KDE users have reported a cleaner look overall for applications that are not displaying in a way folks would like to see. Fedora Workstation for example, keeps folks to a 100 or 200% scale due to this, but it can be enabled easily enough if on e prefers. This is an area of active development that will continue to see improvement.
- alwayslikethis 3y ago
  Note GTK3/4 doesn't have true fractional scaling. What it does is scaling up to 2x and downsample to the required resolution. This is not that visible but it does produce some blur, along with the performance overhead. Qt5 doesn't support it either, though Qt6 does. Of course we'll see improvement, but I doubt it would get to the same level as Windows in the next 5 years or so, which is a long time.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    > This is not that visible but it does produce some blur At these pixel sizes (except 125%), it is irrelevant. MacOS and iPhone do exactly the same for years, and nobody was ever bothered. > along with the performance overhead. By the increased resolution of the framebuffer; the scaling itself is done by hardware (and here I do not mean GPU; I mean output encoder).
    - alwayslikethis 3y ago
      125% and 150% are really common for available laptops though. The former for the 1920x1200 13-14 inch laptops, the latter for 2560x1600 15-16 inch laptops. iOS doesn't do fractionally scaling, only 2x, and Macs are all designed to run at 200%, though you can set it to 175% or 150%. MacOS looks equally terrible at 125% or 100% (this is due to the lack of subpixel rendering, but I digress)
      - sroussey 3y ago
        Oh, iPhones do fractional scaling now, and have for years. The display has gotten much more pixel dense. It is not reported to the developer or the user what the real resolution is.

tristan957 3y ago

Linux support will definitely get better within the next year, but yeah this is my biggest pain point. Electron and other XWayland apps look terrible. Is there some environment variable that I can set to launch Electron apps with the correct command line arguments for Wayland? Edit: Looks like I found what I am looking for: https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/environment-variables#electron_ozone_platform_hint-linux https://www.electronjs.org/docs/latest/api/environment-varia.... Electron apps are still blurry though. Hmm... Also, seems like I need to expose something to Electron apps that are packaged in Flatpak. Needs more research.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
Use a better DE. KDE allows not scaling xwayland apps, and Hyprland does too. Just set Xft.dpi to let it scale the old fashioned way. Electron can be started with wayland but it's often buggy.
- tristan957 3y ago
  GNOME meets all my needs except this one, so I think I will stay here. Definitely looking for a less drastic solution.
vetinari 3y ago
Many electron apps either ignore the ozone flags, or straight up ship with ancient electron, that doesn't support ozone/wayland at all. The only way forward is bug the maintainers of the apps to do the right thing and support wayland properly. Electron itself does.
- tristan957 3y ago
  Slack seems to work great with Wayland, so props to them. VSCode and Discord were giving me trouble however. Thanks for your insight.

ctsdownloads 3y ago

It's on the road to improve, as GNOME continues work here. KDE users have reported a cleaner look overall for applications that are not displaying in a way folks would like to see. Fedora Workstation for example, keeps folks to a 100 or 200% scale due to this, but it can be enabled easily enough if on e prefers. This is an area of active development that will continue to see improvement.

alwayslikethis 3y ago
Note GTK3/4 doesn't have true fractional scaling. What it does is scaling up to 2x and downsample to the required resolution. This is not that visible but it does produce some blur, along with the performance overhead. Qt5 doesn't support it either, though Qt6 does. Of course we'll see improvement, but I doubt it would get to the same level as Windows in the next 5 years or so, which is a long time.
- vetinari 3y ago
  > This is not that visible but it does produce some blur At these pixel sizes (except 125%), it is irrelevant. MacOS and iPhone do exactly the same for years, and nobody was ever bothered. > along with the performance overhead. By the increased resolution of the framebuffer; the scaling itself is done by hardware (and here I do not mean GPU; I mean output encoder).
  - alwayslikethis 3y ago
    125% and 150% are really common for available laptops though. The former for the 1920x1200 13-14 inch laptops, the latter for 2560x1600 15-16 inch laptops. iOS doesn't do fractionally scaling, only 2x, and Macs are all designed to run at 200%, though you can set it to 175% or 150%. MacOS looks equally terrible at 125% or 100% (this is due to the lack of subpixel rendering, but I digress)
    - sroussey 3y ago
      Oh, iPhones do fractional scaling now, and have for years. The display has gotten much more pixel dense. It is not reported to the developer or the user what the real resolution is.