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I'm not sure where all these "X11 is actually great" posts recently are common from but X11 does not have DPI solved. I encourage you to read this comment [1]

I'm not sure where all these "X11 is actually great" posts recently are common from but X11 does not have DPI solved. I encourage you to read this comment [1] to better understand what the actual situation is like. [1]: https://lobste.rs/s/ceylzx/forbidden_secrets_ancient_x11_scaling https://lobste.rs/s/ceylzx/forbidden_secrets_ancient_x11_sca...

baobun 1y ago
The major fundamental issues are there for Wayland too. Most of the comment is a rant about "X11 proponents". Can we please at least try to keep identity politics out of display servers?
- the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
  > The major fundamental issues are there for Wayland too. Which fundamental issues does Wayland have with DPI? I'm not aware of there being any fundamental issues with the DPI handling there.
  - somat 1y ago
    A quote from the article. "If you think this idea is a bit stupid, shed a tear for the future of the display servers: this same mechanism is essentially how Wayland compositors —Wayland being the purported future replacement for X— cope with mixed-DPI setups."
    - mxmilkiib 1y ago
      aw I thought one of the advantages of Wayland is better DPI scaling now where did I hear that, many years ago.. sad that corporate interests (or wetf) are blocking X11 updates, though I don't trust the quality of Xlibre given the regressions the dev introduced previously was planning to go back to Sway once I finally get a 4K monitor..
    - orangeboats 1y ago
      A bit disingenuous to quote an outdated fact. Wayland has supported "proper" DPI (i.e. one without downscaling) for quite a while now, and it's been widely implemented across the ecosystem (on the server side: KDE, GNOME, wlroots-based compositors, Smithay-based compositors, on the client side: GTK, Qt, SDL).
    - the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
      That is only the fallback path in Wayland.
  - jstimpfle 1y ago
    The fundamental issue that it's a hard problem (no matter if on X11/Wayland/Windows/Mac), which can only be solved by the apps and toolkits themselves.
    - the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
      It's only a hard problem if you want to make it one. Mac and Wayland have a pretty elegant and simple solution that does not complicate things. There is nothing wrong at rendering at higher DPI and scaling down. But that's not the problem with X11, the problems there are deeper as explained in the comment I referenced.
      - jstimpfle 1y ago
        There's nothing wrong with OS level down-scaling? Can you show examples screenshots and videos of this? I will assume that - it will require a lot more memory for cached textures etc. since these are created in a virtualized pixel space - it will look more blurry and wrong, most importantly the text will be less than crisp. Apart from that, in many situations you have to scale _up_. Try any older random Windows application (that hasn't declared "DpiAwareness"), even older Windows system dialogs, on a HiDpi monitor (say 27" 4K which is about ~163dpi). They get up-scaled by the system and they look _bad_.
  - somat 1y ago
    I think the fundamental design flaw with the scale all screens approach that wayland(and mac and X11 when set that way) employs is that your application is unable to have better dpi aware rendering. however that may actually be an advantage because it means your application does not need a better dpi aware rendering engine, that is things just work everywhere, it may look theoretically worse in it's scaled context, but at least the application writer does not have to do anything so everything just works.
arp242 1y ago
Well, I guess I live in some other universe, because X11 really does "just work" for everything I want it to do. I don't really care about X11 vs. Wayland as such, but I have a bunch of WM-related tools that only work on X11 (and is not the sort of thing that can work in xwayland), so... Aside: I don't know what it is about the Asahi Linux people that they always need to have the most aggressive takes, assuming hostile malicious intent from anyone who doesn't agree with them or doesn't share the same priorities. These people are just absolutely toxic.

baobun 1y ago

The major fundamental issues are there for Wayland too. Most of the comment is a rant about "X11 proponents". Can we please at least try to keep identity politics out of display servers?

the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
> The major fundamental issues are there for Wayland too. Which fundamental issues does Wayland have with DPI? I'm not aware of there being any fundamental issues with the DPI handling there.
- somat 1y ago
  A quote from the article. "If you think this idea is a bit stupid, shed a tear for the future of the display servers: this same mechanism is essentially how Wayland compositors —Wayland being the purported future replacement for X— cope with mixed-DPI setups."
  - mxmilkiib 1y ago
    aw I thought one of the advantages of Wayland is better DPI scaling now where did I hear that, many years ago.. sad that corporate interests (or wetf) are blocking X11 updates, though I don't trust the quality of Xlibre given the regressions the dev introduced previously was planning to go back to Sway once I finally get a 4K monitor..
  - orangeboats 1y ago
    A bit disingenuous to quote an outdated fact. Wayland has supported "proper" DPI (i.e. one without downscaling) for quite a while now, and it's been widely implemented across the ecosystem (on the server side: KDE, GNOME, wlroots-based compositors, Smithay-based compositors, on the client side: GTK, Qt, SDL).
  - the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
    That is only the fallback path in Wayland.
- jstimpfle 1y ago
  The fundamental issue that it's a hard problem (no matter if on X11/Wayland/Windows/Mac), which can only be solved by the apps and toolkits themselves.
  - the_mitsuhiko 1y ago
    It's only a hard problem if you want to make it one. Mac and Wayland have a pretty elegant and simple solution that does not complicate things. There is nothing wrong at rendering at higher DPI and scaling down. But that's not the problem with X11, the problems there are deeper as explained in the comment I referenced.
    - jstimpfle 1y ago
      There's nothing wrong with OS level down-scaling? Can you show examples screenshots and videos of this? I will assume that - it will require a lot more memory for cached textures etc. since these are created in a virtualized pixel space - it will look more blurry and wrong, most importantly the text will be less than crisp. Apart from that, in many situations you have to scale _up_. Try any older random Windows application (that hasn't declared "DpiAwareness"), even older Windows system dialogs, on a HiDpi monitor (say 27" 4K which is about ~163dpi). They get up-scaled by the system and they look _bad_.
- somat 1y ago
  I think the fundamental design flaw with the scale all screens approach that wayland(and mac and X11 when set that way) employs is that your application is unable to have better dpi aware rendering. however that may actually be an advantage because it means your application does not need a better dpi aware rendering engine, that is things just work everywhere, it may look theoretically worse in it's scaled context, but at least the application writer does not have to do anything so everything just works.

arp242 1y ago

Well, I guess I live in some other universe, because X11 really does "just work" for everything I want it to do. I don't really care about X11 vs. Wayland as such, but I have a bunch of WM-related tools that only work on X11 (and is not the sort of thing that can work in xwayland), so... Aside: I don't know what it is about the Asahi Linux people that they always need to have the most aggressive takes, assuming hostile malicious intent from anyone who doesn't agree with them or doesn't share the same priorities. These people are just absolutely toxic.