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Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abst

Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). Let's not even talk about the case when you have monitors that have different DPI, something that is handled seamlessly by MacOS, unlike Linux where it feels like a d20 roll depending on your distro. I expect most desktop MacOS users to have a HiDPI screen in 2026 (it's just...better), so going to Linux may feel like a serious downgrade, or at least a waste of time if you want to get every config "right". I wish it was differently, honestly - the rest of the OS is great, and the diversity between distros is refreshing.

jhasse 10mo ago
GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?
- cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
  KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.
  - cwillu 10mo ago
    So don't use a third party theme.
    - cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
      Problem is, the stock themes aren't to my taste at all.
      - nish__ 10mo ago
        Why not send a pull request to one of your theme maintainers?
        cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
        To my understanding, doing that wouldn't be helpful due to hard technical limits that can't be reconciled. Most window chrome themes are Aurora themes, which don't play nice with HiDPI, and to change that they'd need to be rewritten as C++ themes (like the default Breeze theme is), which is beyond the capabilities of most people publishing themes.
        pseudalopex 10mo ago
        Did you try Klassy?[1] [1] https://github.com/paulmcauley/klassy https://github.com/paulmcauley/klassy
        cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
        I have not, looks high quality though.
  - Atlas26 10mo ago
    That’s not a KDE issue though, blame the themes
  - jhasse 9mo ago
    Still better than macOS and Windows where third-party theming is basically non-existant. And we were talking about why Linux wasn't an alternative to macOS, weren't we?
- sbrother 10mo ago
  Can you independently set desktop wallpapers on the two screens? I know this seems nitpicky but it's literally impossible with Ubuntu/Gnome as far as I know; I have one vertical and one horizontal and have to just go with a solid color background to make that work.
  - Macha 10mo ago
    Yes. It was actually more tedious to do the inverse when I wanted three screens to do a rotating wallpapers from the same set of folders as I had to set the list of folders three times
- freedomben 10mo ago
  I've been using fractional scaling on Gnome for years (including on the laptop I'm typing this on) and haven't had any issues. I haven't tried it with two displays that are set differently though. Is that a common thing?
  - jhasse 9mo ago
    Open an X11 app and it will be blurry. Also fractional scaling is not supported out-of-the-box in GNOME, you have to set a config value to use it IIRC.
blinkingled 10mo ago
I am a full time KDE/Arch user and since Plasma 6 haven't had any HiDPI issues including monitors with different DPI or X11 apps - of which there are very few nowadays.
- wolvoleo 10mo ago
  I run plasma 6 on X11 and it also functions amazingly well on 200% scaling.
- noisy_boy 10mo ago
  Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever. I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.
cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment, which is one of the things keeping me away. KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode. My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style environments and I just don't enjoy using them. I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until then…
- bsimpson 10mo ago
  So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it. That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge. There are some things I don't know how to work around - like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think you can.
  - cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
    Yep, I've played with it. Things might've changed but I couldn't get KDE's global menubar to work at all under Wayland, and under X11 a lot of apps don't populate it.
    - upboundspiral 10mo ago
      I have the widget for global menu right now in KDE Wayland. Its supported by all QT apps, and there's a wayland protocol pull request for it (unfortunaly stalled, as is tradition). Overall I like it a lot - enough of the apps I use support it (if you're a GTK fan then tough luck). merge request: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/52 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
      - 10mo ago
greenavocado 10mo ago
You're supposed to use KDE with Xorg if you want things to just work. KDE with Wayland if you're adventurous. Therefore newcomers should use Kubuntu or the likes of it
- 6SixTy 10mo ago
  KWin/Xorg AFAIK has been on maintanence duty (i.e. fixes mostly come from XWayland) for >5 years now. KDE has expulsed the Xorg codebase of KWin into a seperate repo in preparation of a Wayland only future. Even if KDE/Xorg is a stable experience is true now, it will not be true in the medium to short term. And a distro like Kubuntu might be 2 years out from merging a "perfect" KDE Plasma experience if it arrived right now.
cherryteastain 10mo ago
Not a problem on my Fedora Silverblue 43 machine with dual 4K 27" screens at 125% scaling. Zero blurry apps, including XWayland ones.
- piskov 10mo ago
  Boy, does that fractional scaling should look like shit on any vector graphics. That’s why Apple used 4k on 22”, 5k on 27 and 6k on 32 to make it crispy always on 200%
lovasoa 10mo ago
I use linux at home (with a HiDPI screen) and MacOS for work. The screen works well with both computers. I mostly just use a text editor, a browser, and a terminal though. Linux has bugs, bug MacOS does too. I feel like for a dev like me, the linux setup is more comfortable.
- mcny 10mo ago
  Same here. I stick to 100% scaling and side step the whole hi dpi issue. I even have a single USB type c cable that connects my laptop to the laptop stand and that laptop stand is what connects to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I know people will say meh but coming from the world of hurt with drivers and windows based soft modems — I was on dial up even as late as 2005! — I think the idea that everything works plug and play is amazing. Compare with my experience on Windows — maybe I did something wrong, I don't know but the external monitor didn't work over HDMI when I installed windows without s network connection and maybe it was a coincidence but it didn't work until I connected to the Internet.
chocochunks 10mo ago
MacOS doesn't handle HiDPI screens that well either. The most common and affordable high res monitors are 27" 4K monitors and those don't mesh well with the way macOS does HiDPI. You either have a perfect 2x but giant 1080p like display or a blurryish non-integer scale that's more usable. And god forbid you still have low DPI monitor still!
- bsimpson 10mo ago
  Blows my minded that a 4k 27" monitor that was $500 a dozen years ago is still near top tier now. 5k has been surprisingly stagnant.
  - SoftTalker 10mo ago
    At some point additional resolution is a dimishing return. The human eye has limits.
    - robotresearcher 10mo ago
      5K 27” looks usefully better than 4K 27” to my middle aged eyes. I’d prefer that to not be so, because 5K panels are so much more expensive. But in a side by side comparison it’s very obvious. But the market has spoken: a quality 4K display is very good, certainly good enough, and the value for money is great. I’m ok with spending more on a better display that I spend so much time with. The cost per use-hour is still very, very low.
      - necovek 10mo ago
        Agreed. I tried 24k 4k screen as soon as they came out (required two DP cables to run at 60Hz at the time), and turning subpixel rendering off, I could see jagged edges on fonts from normal sitting position (I am shortsighted, but at -3.25 I always need correction anyway, which brings my eyesight to better than 20/20). At 27" or 32", DPI is even worse. And MacOS has removed support for subpixel rendering because "retina", though I only use it when forced (work).
    - 10mo ago
seba_dos1 10mo ago
Sure, you can find some obscure DEs that don't handle that well yet. Or you could just use Plasma and have it all work just fine, like it did for many years now.
drnick1 10mo ago
> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). I have been using a 4K display for years on Linux without issues. The scaling issue with non-native apps is a problem that Windows also struggles with btw.
- thrdbndndn 10mo ago
  Windows struggles even with native apps, as soon as you have monitors using different scaling settings. I'm currently using a laptop (1920x1200, 125%) + external monitor (1920x1080, 100%) at work. The task manager has blurry text when putting in the external monitor. It is so bad.
  - pjmlp 10mo ago
    Usually that is a monitor driver issue.
    - thrdbndndn 10mo ago
      It's not, here is a good article about it: https://gist.github.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a267cf https://gist.github.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a2... (And a workaround). Unfortunately I cannot modify registry at work so I have to live with it.
  - Gracana 10mo ago
    Yep, I've been running a Windows laptop plugged into a pair of monitors for the past ten years at work, and across multiple laptops and from Windows 10 to 11, this has always been a problem. If I undock to do some work elsewhere and come back, I either have to live with a bunch of stuff now being blurry, or I need to re-launch all the affected programs. I also have programs that bleed from one monitor onto another when maximized. AutoCAD is one offender that reliably does this -- if it's maximized, several pixels of its window will overlap the edge of the window on the adjacent screen. The bar I set for windows is pretty low, so I'm generally accepting of the jank I encounter in it vs Linux where I know any problem is likely something I can fix. Still, that one feels especially egregious.
storus 10mo ago
I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there was no way to change the font size (they removed the text size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the Display section of settings) so I ended up with either super small or super large fonts without anything in-between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was it.
- QuercusMax 10mo ago
  BetterDisplay has solved a ton of problems like this for me; when MacOS gets confused about non apple monitors, BetterDisplay knows how to fix things.
- chrisweekly 10mo ago
  Curious what software; I've used "SwitchResX" in the past and it met all my needs...
  - storus 10mo ago
    It was BetterDisplay. Thanks for the hint, will take a look at SwitchResX as well. BetterDisplay looks too complicated for what I need it to do (just switch the screen to 2560x1080 scaled).
- Saline9515 10mo ago
  I bought a MacStudio 2 months ago, on Sequoia you go to "display" and should see the various resolutions. If not, "advanced">"show resolutions as a list">"show all resolutions".
  - storus 10mo ago
    Unfortunately, resolutions offered were weird. Native is 5120x2160 but that wasn't offered and scaled resolutions were weird. I guess macOS didn't read monitor's information properly or something. I wasted a few hours frantically trying to figure out how to connect a $12k computer to a 4-year old monitor which should have been a breeze but for some reason wasn't. The same monitor worked fine on Linux or Windows.
Macha 10mo ago
> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). Meanwhile on MacOS my displays may work. Or they might not work. Or they might work but randomly locked to 30hz. It depends on what order they wake up in or get plugged in. I suspect the root of the problem is one of them is a very high refresh rate monitor (1440p360hz) and probably related to the display bandwidth limitations that provide a relatively low monitor limit for such a high cost machine.
- QuercusMax 10mo ago
  I finally got fed up with my two external monitors (one of which I rotate to portrait) getting mixed up by MacOS every time my MacBook would go to sleep or I unplugged it, so I bought a thunderbolt docking station which has basically solved all my issues. Worth every penny to be able to swap my personal laptop and work laptop with a single cable. Macs don't support the USBC / displayport daisy chaining support that my monitors should be able to handle. Very frustrating that this stuff is still so nonstandard. If you have all Apple it all works perfectly, of course.
  - Macha 10mo ago
    But don’t forget to order the “right” (i.e. caldigit) dock. My dell dock is even more of a mess on the Mac than plugging the monitors in directly. Works great with a Dell (obviously) and framework laptop running Win10 and Linux respectively though
    - QuercusMax 10mo ago
      I've got a Dell dock that worked OK after I borrowed a windows laptop to update the firmware; but it only works with my M3 and M4 macbooks, but not my M2 Mac Mini.
- deaux 10mo ago
  I have similar issues without the high refresh rate. It's a MacOS bug related to sleep/wake corrupting internal display settings. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvotes&page=1 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote... After 344 "me too"s and 180+ replies they silently locked the thread to save themselves from more embarassment.
eek2121 10mo ago
My dude, It's been more than capable for years. I have an ultrawide OLED monitor (3440x1440@165hz) paired with a 4K@144hz monitor. Both HDR, different capabilities. Both have different DPIs set, 125% for one, 200% for the other. My setup required less configuration than Windows does. Right click -> Display Configuration -> Set Alignment (monitor position) -> Set refresh rate -> Set HDR -> Set DPI -> Apply. Done. Don't knock it unless you've tried it. This was CachyOS btw. Windows actually required MORE work because I had to install drivers, connect to the internet during setup, get nagged about using a Microsoft account, etc. CachyOS was basically boot -> verify partitions are correct -> decide on defaults -> create account/password -> wait for files to copy -> done. Drivers, including the latest NVIDIA drivers, auto installed/working.
- Saline9515 10mo ago
  Tried 3 months ago with Gnome (PopOS) and a 4k screen at 125% scaling, apps were blurry, especially Brave, which was a big disappointment. I give Linux a try each time I need to set up a new computer, and each time run into new issues. Last time (2 years ago) the hdmi connection with the screen would drop randomly twice a day. Same for the keyboard, and the wifi card didn't have drivers available. It became quite annoying, reducing my productivity as I had to reboot and pray. I then installed Windows, which solved all of the issues (unfortunately?) Maybe I'm just unlucky.
  - talentedcoin 10mo ago
    If you’re unlucky in the same way I was, it could actually be a GNOME/GTK issue. Some questionable (?) font rendering decisions were made that for me caused all text in GNOME to be blurry. I hated it so much I switched to KDE but soon realized GTK apps had the same issue. Eventually I found a fix that worked and now I’m happy. So, next time you can try this. In the file: ~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini You can add: [Settings] gtk-hint-font-metrics=1 Here’s the Arch wiki page that explains it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applications_is_blurry_or_renders_incorrectly https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applicati... If your settings.ini is in a different spot see: https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.Settings.html https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.Settings.html
truncate 10mo ago
I've not had any issues with 4k display. Mac does handle monitors with different DPIs well, but not really a issue for me. Most hardware I use also just works great. Gaming is great now as well. The only reason I can't completely switch to Linux is because there are no great options for anything non-programming related stuff I love to do ... such as photography, music (guitar amplifier sims).
starkparker 10mo ago
Every 4K external display I've connected to every M1- and M2-series Mac running macOS has a known flickering issue with Display Stream Compression that Apple knows about and has been unable or unwilling to fix. The only reliable fixes are to either disable that DisplayPort feature if your monitor supports it, or to disable GPU Dithering using a paid third-party tool (BetterDisplay). Either that or switch to Asahi, which doesn't have that issue. The issue is common enough that BENQ has a FAQ page about it, which includes steps like "disable dark mode" and "wait for 2 hours": https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to-fix-mac-m1-m2-external-monitor-flicker.html https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to...
- RHSeeger 10mo ago
  One of my external screens is 4k and I haven't noticed any flickering. It's an Apple monitor though, so maybe that's the difference.
  - pier25 10mo ago
    I've used ASUS 4K monitors on M2 and M4 machines without issues.
    - bzzzt 10mo ago
      My Dell Ultrasharp 4K also doesn't flicker and has DSC enabled according to the on screen menu. At work there are a few old Iiyama 4K screens that flicker though, but I don't know if they even understand DSC.
      - mcv 10mo ago
        I've got a 4K Samsung Odyssey that I have come to hate because of it's extreme slowness and weird behaviour (I do not recommend this line), but I haven't had any problems with flickering with either M1s or M3s.
- Terretta 10mo ago
  If you're looking for high quality text at 4K, your options are more limited than if you're looking for gaming. This is a good roundup, and the leading Dell is superb: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/business-office https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/busines... And as noted here on HN a couple days ago, avoid OLED. Coincidentally, the top office monitor per rtings is what that post compared OLED to: https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/ https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583 We use pairs of these Dells per MacBook at our offices and provide them for WR as well. There've been no issues on this Dell or prior models on M1 through M4 (M5 iPad is fine too). As for DSC, that's been a complaint for a minute… Example HN reader theory on DSC, from Aug 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568
deaux 10mo ago
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvotes&page=1 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote... MacOS isn't in any kind of position regarding displays. 180+ replies and 300+ upvotes by the 0.1% of sufferers who bother to find these threads, log in, and comment of them. Exteemely widespread, going on for years, thread silently locked.
pkulak 10mo ago
Wait, has MacOS finally figured out fractional scaling? Last I looked, Linux actually had better support. And now Linux support is pretty good. It’s really only older apps that don’t work.
- throw383734q 10mo ago
  No, it has not. Scaling is better on Linux and Windows.
NamlchakKhandro 10mo ago
lmao not even osx handles this problem properly... lmfao
spockz 10mo ago
I recently installed CachyOS and the text was crisp and accurate out of the box on my hidpi screen. So whatever settings and software combinations are required, cachyos got it right, with KDE and wayland at least. All apps I use have been rendered perfectly clear.
necovek 10mo ago
Since MacOS removed subpixel rendering a few years ago, regular resolution displays have terrible looking text in comparison to Windows or Linux. Gnome in Linux works great for a decade+ with a single high resolution screen, but there are certainly apps that render too small (Steam was one of the problems). Different scaling factors on several monitors are not perfect though, but I generally dislike how Mac handles that too as I mostly use big screen when docked (32"-43"-55"), or laptop screen when not, and it rearranges my windows with every switch.
- ewoodrich 10mo ago
  I recently mentioned in another comment that Fedora 43 on my Ideapad is the first “just works” experience I’ve had with my multi monitor setup(s) on anything other than Windows 11 (including MacOS where I needed to pay for Better Display to reach the bar of “tolerable”). Zero fiddling necessary other than picking my ideal scaling percentage on each display for perfect, crisp text with everything sanely sized across all my monitors/TVs. I gave up on Linux Mint for that exact reason. I wasted so much time trying to fine tune fonts and stuff to emulate real fractional scaling. Whenever I thought I finally found a usable compromise some random app would look terrible on one of the monitors and I’d be back at square one. Experimental Wayland on Linux Mint just wasn’t usable unfortunately and tbh wasn’t a big fan of Cinnamon in general (I just really hated dealing with snaps on Ubuntu). I did tweak Gnome to add minimize buttons/bottom dock again and with that it’s probably my favorite desktop across any version of Linux/MacOS/Windows I’ve ever used! I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!
  - jijijijij 10mo ago
    > I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago! This. I don't know why, but people forget about Fedora when considering distros. They rather fight Arch than try Fedora. So, did I. Maybe its Redhat. Wish I switched earlier, too. (Although I heard this level of polish wasn't always the case.) I love Fedora so much. Everything just works, but that's not that special compared to Ubuntu. What is special is the fucking sanity throughout the whole system. Debian based distros always have some legacy shit going on. No bloat, no snap, nothing breaking convention and their upgrade model sits in the sweet spot between Ubuntu's 4 year LTS cycle and Arch's rolling release. Pacman can rot in hell, apt is okay, but oh boy, do I love dnf. Tho, Fedora has some minor quirks, which still make it hard to recommend for total beginners without personal instructions/guidance IMO. Like the need for RPMFusion repos and the bad handling/documentation of that. Not a problem if you know at all what a package manager, PKI and terminal is, but too much otherwise.
bpye 10mo ago
I'm not going to claim that every compositor/WM handles high DPI well on Linux, however both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience. I actually find that KDE on Wayland handles mixed DPI better than Windows, macOS doesn't really give you enough control to try.
deleted 10mo ago
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shuntress 10mo ago
Inconsequential minutiae concerning display resolution is absolutely NOT the thing keeping people away from Linux. Its the "getting every config" right thing that is the problem.
Atlas26 10mo ago
> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. I’m glad everyone is dogpiling on this statement cause man people seriously have to stop parroting this years out of date claim at this point. Any big well supported distro using Wayland should be fine, at the very least KDE and GNOME are guaranteed work perfectly with HiDPI. Daily Fedora KDE user here on 4K HiDPI monitor plus another of a different lower resolution, flawless experience using both together in a setup. Fractional scaling also there working perfectly as well and you choose how you want KDE to scale the apps if you want (forcefully or let the app decide).
- port11 10mo ago
  Funny you mention Fedora, since the installer itself is unusable in my 4K display, defaulting to the 4K resolution instead of a 2x. I never managed to install Fedora using the GUI.
  - prmoustache 10mo ago
    Why don't you just set the resolution manually temporarily for the installer to say 1920x1080 at boot time?
    - port11 10mo ago
      “Why don’t you just” is precisely the Linux thing that irks me the most. Why don’t they just make it obvious? Why doesn’t the installer just figure it out or ask me when it launches? I agree that that would help, but it was easier to just install another distro.
      - prmoustache 10mo ago
        I mean it is probably a bug that may have been limited to your specific combination of hardware for all I know, not like they make sure it cannot work.
  - Atlas26 10mo ago
    Gotta be something hardware specific to you like the other guy said cause I literally just did a fresh fedora install on a 4K display a few months ago with zero issues, and majority of people I know also use 4K displays for their Fedora workstations, and that has never once been brought up as an issue. Maybe search around for whatever hardware you’re running, otherwise I really have no idea what would cause that.
larrik 10mo ago
I went from Linux (10 years) to Mac (4 years) to Windows (8 months) to back to Mac. (I have not upgraded to Tahoe, and didn't even realize it was so different until recently) IMO, there's basically no problem Linux has that isn't worse in Windows (at the OS level). Especially once you get into laptops. My final conclusion was that I hate computers.

jhasse 10mo ago

GNOME still has some problems with fractional scaling, but KDE works perfectly. I'm using two displays, one with 150% and one with 100%. No blurry apps and absolutely no issues. Have you tried it recently?

cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
KDE is in better shape than GNOME, but there are still some nits. Nearly all the available third party themes for example are blurry or otherwise render incorrectly with fractional scaling on.
- cwillu 10mo ago
  So don't use a third party theme.
  - cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
    Problem is, the stock themes aren't to my taste at all.
    - nish__ 10mo ago
      Why not send a pull request to one of your theme maintainers?
      - cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
        To my understanding, doing that wouldn't be helpful due to hard technical limits that can't be reconciled. Most window chrome themes are Aurora themes, which don't play nice with HiDPI, and to change that they'd need to be rewritten as C++ themes (like the default Breeze theme is), which is beyond the capabilities of most people publishing themes.
        pseudalopex 10mo ago
        Did you try Klassy?[1] [1] https://github.com/paulmcauley/klassy https://github.com/paulmcauley/klassy
        cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
        I have not, looks high quality though.
- Atlas26 10mo ago
  That’s not a KDE issue though, blame the themes
- jhasse 9mo ago
  Still better than macOS and Windows where third-party theming is basically non-existant. And we were talking about why Linux wasn't an alternative to macOS, weren't we?
sbrother 10mo ago
Can you independently set desktop wallpapers on the two screens? I know this seems nitpicky but it's literally impossible with Ubuntu/Gnome as far as I know; I have one vertical and one horizontal and have to just go with a solid color background to make that work.
- Macha 10mo ago
  Yes. It was actually more tedious to do the inverse when I wanted three screens to do a rotating wallpapers from the same set of folders as I had to set the list of folders three times
freedomben 10mo ago
I've been using fractional scaling on Gnome for years (including on the laptop I'm typing this on) and haven't had any issues. I haven't tried it with two displays that are set differently though. Is that a common thing?
- jhasse 9mo ago
  Open an X11 app and it will be blurry. Also fractional scaling is not supported out-of-the-box in GNOME, you have to set a config value to use it IIRC.

blinkingled 10mo ago

I am a full time KDE/Arch user and since Plasma 6 haven't had any HiDPI issues including monitors with different DPI or X11 apps - of which there are very few nowadays.

wolvoleo 10mo ago
I run plasma 6 on X11 and it also functions amazingly well on 200% scaling.
noisy_boy 10mo ago
Fedora 43 with KDE - have been using 140% scaling with my Dell Ultrasharp 32" 4k monitor - no issues whatsoever. I've noticed that the Dells do a pretty good job with Linux - I have used monitors of various sizes ranging from 27" to 43" and never had any issues on Linux.

cosmic_cheese 10mo ago

It also doesn't offer a Mac-style desktop environment, which is one of the things keeping me away. KDE/Cinnamon/XFCE lean more Windows-style, GNOME/Pantheon (Elementary) is more like iPadOS/Android in desktop mode. My productivity takes a big hit in Windows-style environments and I just don't enjoy using them. I hope to put my money where my mouth is and contribute to one of the tiny handful of nascent Mac-like environment projects out there once some spare time opens up, but until then…

bsimpson 10mo ago
So apparently when Canonical was the gorilla in desktop Linux, they had a push to have apps make their menus accessible via API. KDE supports that protocol. There are KDE widgets that will draw a Mac-style menu bar from it. That means you can take the standard KDE "panel" and split it in two halves: a dock for the bottom edge, and a menus/wifi settings/clock bar for the top edge. There are some things I don't know how to work around - like Chrome defaulting to Windows-style close buttons and keybindings, but if the Start menu copy is the thing keeping you off Linux, you can mod it more than you think you can.
- cosmic_cheese 10mo ago
  Yep, I've played with it. Things might've changed but I couldn't get KDE's global menubar to work at all under Wayland, and under X11 a lot of apps don't populate it.
  - upboundspiral 10mo ago
    I have the widget for global menu right now in KDE Wayland. Its supported by all QT apps, and there's a wayland protocol pull request for it (unfortunaly stalled, as is tradition). Overall I like it a lot - enough of the apps I use support it (if you're a GTK fan then tough luck). merge request: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/merge_requests/52 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...
    - 10mo ago

greenavocado 10mo ago

You're supposed to use KDE with Xorg if you want things to just work. KDE with Wayland if you're adventurous. Therefore newcomers should use Kubuntu or the likes of it

6SixTy 10mo ago
KWin/Xorg AFAIK has been on maintanence duty (i.e. fixes mostly come from XWayland) for >5 years now. KDE has expulsed the Xorg codebase of KWin into a seperate repo in preparation of a Wayland only future. Even if KDE/Xorg is a stable experience is true now, it will not be true in the medium to short term. And a distro like Kubuntu might be 2 years out from merging a "perfect" KDE Plasma experience if it arrived right now.

cherryteastain 10mo ago

Not a problem on my Fedora Silverblue 43 machine with dual 4K 27" screens at 125% scaling. Zero blurry apps, including XWayland ones.

piskov 10mo ago
Boy, does that fractional scaling should look like shit on any vector graphics. That’s why Apple used 4k on 22”, 5k on 27 and 6k on 32 to make it crispy always on 200%

lovasoa 10mo ago

I use linux at home (with a HiDPI screen) and MacOS for work. The screen works well with both computers. I mostly just use a text editor, a browser, and a terminal though. Linux has bugs, bug MacOS does too. I feel like for a dev like me, the linux setup is more comfortable.

mcny 10mo ago
Same here. I stick to 100% scaling and side step the whole hi dpi issue. I even have a single USB type c cable that connects my laptop to the laptop stand and that laptop stand is what connects to the monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I know people will say meh but coming from the world of hurt with drivers and windows based soft modems — I was on dial up even as late as 2005! — I think the idea that everything works plug and play is amazing. Compare with my experience on Windows — maybe I did something wrong, I don't know but the external monitor didn't work over HDMI when I installed windows without s network connection and maybe it was a coincidence but it didn't work until I connected to the Internet.

chocochunks 10mo ago

MacOS doesn't handle HiDPI screens that well either. The most common and affordable high res monitors are 27" 4K monitors and those don't mesh well with the way macOS does HiDPI. You either have a perfect 2x but giant 1080p like display or a blurryish non-integer scale that's more usable. And god forbid you still have low DPI monitor still!

bsimpson 10mo ago
Blows my minded that a 4k 27" monitor that was $500 a dozen years ago is still near top tier now. 5k has been surprisingly stagnant.
- SoftTalker 10mo ago
  At some point additional resolution is a dimishing return. The human eye has limits.
  - robotresearcher 10mo ago
    5K 27” looks usefully better than 4K 27” to my middle aged eyes. I’d prefer that to not be so, because 5K panels are so much more expensive. But in a side by side comparison it’s very obvious. But the market has spoken: a quality 4K display is very good, certainly good enough, and the value for money is great. I’m ok with spending more on a better display that I spend so much time with. The cost per use-hour is still very, very low.
    - necovek 10mo ago
      Agreed. I tried 24k 4k screen as soon as they came out (required two DP cables to run at 60Hz at the time), and turning subpixel rendering off, I could see jagged edges on fonts from normal sitting position (I am shortsighted, but at -3.25 I always need correction anyway, which brings my eyesight to better than 20/20). At 27" or 32", DPI is even worse. And MacOS has removed support for subpixel rendering because "retina", though I only use it when forced (work).
  - 10mo ago

seba_dos1 10mo ago

Sure, you can find some obscure DEs that don't handle that well yet. Or you could just use Plasma and have it all work just fine, like it did for many years now.

drnick1 10mo ago

thrdbndndn 10mo ago
Windows struggles even with native apps, as soon as you have monitors using different scaling settings. I'm currently using a laptop (1920x1200, 125%) + external monitor (1920x1080, 100%) at work. The task manager has blurry text when putting in the external monitor. It is so bad.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  Usually that is a monitor driver issue.
  - thrdbndndn 10mo ago
    It's not, here is a good article about it: https://gist.github.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a267cf https://gist.github.com/valinet/d66733e5f1398856bb21bda466a2... (And a workaround). Unfortunately I cannot modify registry at work so I have to live with it.
- Gracana 10mo ago
  Yep, I've been running a Windows laptop plugged into a pair of monitors for the past ten years at work, and across multiple laptops and from Windows 10 to 11, this has always been a problem. If I undock to do some work elsewhere and come back, I either have to live with a bunch of stuff now being blurry, or I need to re-launch all the affected programs. I also have programs that bleed from one monitor onto another when maximized. AutoCAD is one offender that reliably does this -- if it's maximized, several pixels of its window will overlap the edge of the window on the adjacent screen. The bar I set for windows is pretty low, so I'm generally accepting of the jank I encounter in it vs Linux where I know any problem is likely something I can fix. Still, that one feels especially egregious.

storus 10mo ago

I recently bought a MacStudio with 512GB of RAM and connected it to a LG 5k2k monitor. For some reason there was no way to change the font size (they removed the text size "Larger Text ... More Space" continuum from the Display section of settings) so I ended up with either super small or super large fonts without anything in-between. In the end I had to install some 3rd party software and mix my own scaled resolution with acceptable font size. This has never been a problem on Linux in the past 10 years, all I needed to do at worst when it wasn't done out of the box was to set scale somewhere and that was it.

QuercusMax 10mo ago
BetterDisplay has solved a ton of problems like this for me; when MacOS gets confused about non apple monitors, BetterDisplay knows how to fix things.
chrisweekly 10mo ago
Curious what software; I've used "SwitchResX" in the past and it met all my needs...
- storus 10mo ago
  It was BetterDisplay. Thanks for the hint, will take a look at SwitchResX as well. BetterDisplay looks too complicated for what I need it to do (just switch the screen to 2560x1080 scaled).
Saline9515 10mo ago
I bought a MacStudio 2 months ago, on Sequoia you go to "display" and should see the various resolutions. If not, "advanced">"show resolutions as a list">"show all resolutions".
- storus 10mo ago
  Unfortunately, resolutions offered were weird. Native is 5120x2160 but that wasn't offered and scaled resolutions were weird. I guess macOS didn't read monitor's information properly or something. I wasted a few hours frantically trying to figure out how to connect a $12k computer to a 4-year old monitor which should have been a breeze but for some reason wasn't. The same monitor worked fine on Linux or Windows.

Macha 10mo ago

> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. It doesn't handles HiDPI (e.g 4K) screen uniformly, leading to a lot of blurry apps depending on the display abstraction used (Wayland/X11) and compositor (GNOME, KDE, etc, all behave differently). Meanwhile on MacOS my displays may work. Or they might not work. Or they might work but randomly locked to 30hz. It depends on what order they wake up in or get plugged in. I suspect the root of the problem is one of them is a very high refresh rate monitor (1440p360hz) and probably related to the display bandwidth limitations that provide a relatively low monitor limit for such a high cost machine.

QuercusMax 10mo ago
I finally got fed up with my two external monitors (one of which I rotate to portrait) getting mixed up by MacOS every time my MacBook would go to sleep or I unplugged it, so I bought a thunderbolt docking station which has basically solved all my issues. Worth every penny to be able to swap my personal laptop and work laptop with a single cable. Macs don't support the USBC / displayport daisy chaining support that my monitors should be able to handle. Very frustrating that this stuff is still so nonstandard. If you have all Apple it all works perfectly, of course.
- Macha 10mo ago
  But don’t forget to order the “right” (i.e. caldigit) dock. My dell dock is even more of a mess on the Mac than plugging the monitors in directly. Works great with a Dell (obviously) and framework laptop running Win10 and Linux respectively though
  - QuercusMax 10mo ago
    I've got a Dell dock that worked OK after I borrowed a windows laptop to update the firmware; but it only works with my M3 and M4 macbooks, but not my M2 Mac Mini.
deaux 10mo ago
I have similar issues without the high refresh rate. It's a MacOS bug related to sleep/wake corrupting internal display settings. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvotes&page=1 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote... After 344 "me too"s and 180+ replies they silently locked the thread to save themselves from more embarassment.

eek2121 10mo ago

My dude, It's been more than capable for years. I have an ultrawide OLED monitor (3440x1440@165hz) paired with a 4K@144hz monitor. Both HDR, different capabilities. Both have different DPIs set, 125% for one, 200% for the other. My setup required less configuration than Windows does. Right click -> Display Configuration -> Set Alignment (monitor position) -> Set refresh rate -> Set HDR -> Set DPI -> Apply. Done. Don't knock it unless you've tried it. This was CachyOS btw. Windows actually required MORE work because I had to install drivers, connect to the internet during setup, get nagged about using a Microsoft account, etc. CachyOS was basically boot -> verify partitions are correct -> decide on defaults -> create account/password -> wait for files to copy -> done. Drivers, including the latest NVIDIA drivers, auto installed/working.

Saline9515 10mo ago
Tried 3 months ago with Gnome (PopOS) and a 4k screen at 125% scaling, apps were blurry, especially Brave, which was a big disappointment. I give Linux a try each time I need to set up a new computer, and each time run into new issues. Last time (2 years ago) the hdmi connection with the screen would drop randomly twice a day. Same for the keyboard, and the wifi card didn't have drivers available. It became quite annoying, reducing my productivity as I had to reboot and pray. I then installed Windows, which solved all of the issues (unfortunately?) Maybe I'm just unlucky.
- talentedcoin 10mo ago
  If you’re unlucky in the same way I was, it could actually be a GNOME/GTK issue. Some questionable (?) font rendering decisions were made that for me caused all text in GNOME to be blurry. I hated it so much I switched to KDE but soon realized GTK apps had the same issue. Eventually I found a fix that worked and now I’m happy. So, next time you can try this. In the file: ~/.config/gtk-4.0/settings.ini You can add: [Settings] gtk-hint-font-metrics=1 Here’s the Arch wiki page that explains it: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applications_is_blurry_or_renders_incorrectly https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GTK#Text_in_GTK_4_applicati... If your settings.ini is in a different spot see: https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.Settings.html https://docs.gtk.org/gtk4/class.Settings.html

truncate 10mo ago

I've not had any issues with 4k display. Mac does handle monitors with different DPIs well, but not really a issue for me. Most hardware I use also just works great. Gaming is great now as well. The only reason I can't completely switch to Linux is because there are no great options for anything non-programming related stuff I love to do ... such as photography, music (guitar amplifier sims).

starkparker 10mo ago

Every 4K external display I've connected to every M1- and M2-series Mac running macOS has a known flickering issue with Display Stream Compression that Apple knows about and has been unable or unwilling to fix. The only reliable fixes are to either disable that DisplayPort feature if your monitor supports it, or to disable GPU Dithering using a paid third-party tool (BetterDisplay). Either that or switch to Asahi, which doesn't have that issue. The issue is common enough that BENQ has a FAQ page about it, which includes steps like "disable dark mode" and "wait for 2 hours": https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to-fix-mac-m1-m2-external-monitor-flicker.html https://www.benq.com/en-us/knowledge-center/knowledge/how-to...

RHSeeger 10mo ago
One of my external screens is 4k and I haven't noticed any flickering. It's an Apple monitor though, so maybe that's the difference.
- pier25 10mo ago
  I've used ASUS 4K monitors on M2 and M4 machines without issues.
  - bzzzt 10mo ago
    My Dell Ultrasharp 4K also doesn't flicker and has DSC enabled according to the on screen menu. At work there are a few old Iiyama 4K screens that flicker though, but I don't know if they even understand DSC.
    - mcv 10mo ago
      I've got a 4K Samsung Odyssey that I have come to hate because of it's extreme slowness and weird behaviour (I do not recommend this line), but I haven't had any problems with flickering with either M1s or M3s.
Terretta 10mo ago
If you're looking for high quality text at 4K, your options are more limited than if you're looking for gaming. This is a good roundup, and the leading Dell is superb: https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/business-office https://www.rtings.com/monitor/reviews/best/by-usage/busines... And as noted here on HN a couple days ago, avoid OLED. Coincidentally, the top office monitor per rtings is what that post compared OLED to: https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/ https://nuxx.net/blog/2026/01/09/oled-not-for-me/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46562583 We use pairs of these Dells per MacBook at our offices and provide them for WR as well. There've been no issues on this Dell or prior models on M1 through M4 (M5 iPad is fine too). As for DSC, that's been a complaint for a minute… Example HN reader theory on DSC, from Aug 2023: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37025568

deaux 10mo ago

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvotes&page=1 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255860955?sortBy=upvote... MacOS isn't in any kind of position regarding displays. 180+ replies and 300+ upvotes by the 0.1% of sufferers who bother to find these threads, log in, and comment of them. Exteemely widespread, going on for years, thread silently locked.

pkulak 10mo ago

Wait, has MacOS finally figured out fractional scaling? Last I looked, Linux actually had better support. And now Linux support is pretty good. It’s really only older apps that don’t work.

throw383734q 10mo ago
No, it has not. Scaling is better on Linux and Windows.

NamlchakKhandro 10mo ago

lmao not even osx handles this problem properly... lmfao

spockz 10mo ago

I recently installed CachyOS and the text was crisp and accurate out of the box on my hidpi screen. So whatever settings and software combinations are required, cachyos got it right, with KDE and wayland at least. All apps I use have been rendered perfectly clear.

necovek 10mo ago

Since MacOS removed subpixel rendering a few years ago, regular resolution displays have terrible looking text in comparison to Windows or Linux. Gnome in Linux works great for a decade+ with a single high resolution screen, but there are certainly apps that render too small (Steam was one of the problems). Different scaling factors on several monitors are not perfect though, but I generally dislike how Mac handles that too as I mostly use big screen when docked (32"-43"-55"), or laptop screen when not, and it rearranges my windows with every switch.

ewoodrich 10mo ago
I recently mentioned in another comment that Fedora 43 on my Ideapad is the first “just works” experience I’ve had with my multi monitor setup(s) on anything other than Windows 11 (including MacOS where I needed to pay for Better Display to reach the bar of “tolerable”). Zero fiddling necessary other than picking my ideal scaling percentage on each display for perfect, crisp text with everything sanely sized across all my monitors/TVs. I gave up on Linux Mint for that exact reason. I wasted so much time trying to fine tune fonts and stuff to emulate real fractional scaling. Whenever I thought I finally found a usable compromise some random app would look terrible on one of the monitors and I’d be back at square one. Experimental Wayland on Linux Mint just wasn’t usable unfortunately and tbh wasn’t a big fan of Cinnamon in general (I just really hated dealing with snaps on Ubuntu). I did tweak Gnome to add minimize buttons/bottom dock again and with that it’s probably my favorite desktop across any version of Linux/MacOS/Windows I’ve ever used! I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago!
- jijijijij 10mo ago
  > I kept reading endorsements of Fedora's level of polish/stability on HN but was kinda nervous having used Debian distros my entire life and I’m really happy I finally took the plunge. Wish I tried it years ago! This. I don't know why, but people forget about Fedora when considering distros. They rather fight Arch than try Fedora. So, did I. Maybe its Redhat. Wish I switched earlier, too. (Although I heard this level of polish wasn't always the case.) I love Fedora so much. Everything just works, but that's not that special compared to Ubuntu. What is special is the fucking sanity throughout the whole system. Debian based distros always have some legacy shit going on. No bloat, no snap, nothing breaking convention and their upgrade model sits in the sweet spot between Ubuntu's 4 year LTS cycle and Arch's rolling release. Pacman can rot in hell, apt is okay, but oh boy, do I love dnf. Tho, Fedora has some minor quirks, which still make it hard to recommend for total beginners without personal instructions/guidance IMO. Like the need for RPMFusion repos and the bad handling/documentation of that. Not a problem if you know at all what a package manager, PKI and terminal is, but too much otherwise.

bpye 10mo ago

I'm not going to claim that every compositor/WM handles high DPI well on Linux, however both KDE and Gnome on Wayland are fine in my experience. I actually find that KDE on Wayland handles mixed DPI better than Windows, macOS doesn't really give you enough control to try.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

shuntress 10mo ago

Inconsequential minutiae concerning display resolution is absolutely NOT the thing keeping people away from Linux. Its the "getting every config" right thing that is the problem.

Atlas26 10mo ago

> Linux isn't in position regarding display/UI. I’m glad everyone is dogpiling on this statement cause man people seriously have to stop parroting this years out of date claim at this point. Any big well supported distro using Wayland should be fine, at the very least KDE and GNOME are guaranteed work perfectly with HiDPI. Daily Fedora KDE user here on 4K HiDPI monitor plus another of a different lower resolution, flawless experience using both together in a setup. Fractional scaling also there working perfectly as well and you choose how you want KDE to scale the apps if you want (forcefully or let the app decide).

port11 10mo ago
Funny you mention Fedora, since the installer itself is unusable in my 4K display, defaulting to the 4K resolution instead of a 2x. I never managed to install Fedora using the GUI.
- prmoustache 10mo ago
  Why don't you just set the resolution manually temporarily for the installer to say 1920x1080 at boot time?
  - port11 10mo ago
    “Why don’t you just” is precisely the Linux thing that irks me the most. Why don’t they just make it obvious? Why doesn’t the installer just figure it out or ask me when it launches? I agree that that would help, but it was easier to just install another distro.
    - prmoustache 10mo ago
      I mean it is probably a bug that may have been limited to your specific combination of hardware for all I know, not like they make sure it cannot work.
- Atlas26 10mo ago
  Gotta be something hardware specific to you like the other guy said cause I literally just did a fresh fedora install on a 4K display a few months ago with zero issues, and majority of people I know also use 4K displays for their Fedora workstations, and that has never once been brought up as an issue. Maybe search around for whatever hardware you’re running, otherwise I really have no idea what would cause that.

larrik 10mo ago

I went from Linux (10 years) to Mac (4 years) to Windows (8 months) to back to Mac. (I have not upgraded to Tahoe, and didn't even realize it was so different until recently) IMO, there's basically no problem Linux has that isn't worse in Windows (at the OS level). Especially once you get into laptops. My final conclusion was that I hate computers.