The saddest thing about this is that X11 was intended from the start to support multiple DPIs (see e.g. xdpyinfo(1)) and originally shipped with rasterized font

The saddest thing about this is that X11 was intended from the start to support multiple DPIs (see e.g. xdpyinfo(1)) and originally shipped with rasterized fonts in multiple resolutions. Sadly the "year of the desktop" crowd has been absolutely consistent in forcing *nix UIs down into the Windows mold.