Is there a Linux [window manager / desktop environment / whatever they're called these days] that has good support for fractional resolution scaling on hidpi displays? My aging eyes really want 150% scaling for this Framework 13 laptop, but gnome only offers 100% and 200%.
EDIT: so far KDE does the right thing. I wish there were more options though.
@aeva I would pretty much only recommend @kde if you want good scaling. And KDE Plasma 6 on @fedora 40 is awesome. If you want more of an explanation, @marcan goes into detail about this when looking at KDE and GNOME for Fedora Asahi Remix: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/111510084925258924
@Conan_Kudo@kde@fedora@marcan oh yeah. I got fractional scaling working on GNOME, and I can confirm that x11 applications look like dogshit with it. There's some oddness with the applications that are working correctly, too, which makes me think they're doing something odd (in comparison to how said programs behave on Windows), but idk if that's GNOME's fault or a limitation of wayland, or what. It's tolerable though, I guess, I just wish it were better done.
@aeva just run gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']" and then the option will appear
this could, depending on who you ask, increase gpu usage, but apparently that's debated, so ¯_(ツ)_/¯
@aeva I think it should be possible, but it's not gonna look that good... what if you change the font size to fit you better rather than the entire GUI?
@aeva I think Gnome can do fractional if you use Wayland instead of X11; KDE too. IIRC I’ve got my KDE/Wayland session at 125% (Framework 16, 54 year old eyeballs).
@aeva gnome's scaling is good on Wayland, you just have to enable it manually for some reason
i have a Framework 13 too and it works perfectly, except for xwayland apps but as far as i'm aware that's an issue with xwayland itself so it'll be like that on all desktops
@aeva My system has 150% as an option but it looks bad. Gnome does 1.5x by doing 2x on a virtual frame buffer and downsampling (poorly). Which also runs your GPU hot.
Gnome Tweaks has a font scaling option. Which works okay. (Except for icons)
Whatever you do, don’t get smart and calculate the exact DPI scale factor for your screen. QT apps only work on multiples of 25%.
@aeva Depends. HDPI aware 3D rendering targets get the truth. HDPI aware applications get told 1, 2, or 3x. Non HDPI aware applications default to 1x and get integer scaled.
For the first few years all their screens were exactly 2x DPI so the point was moot. But when they rolled out the iPhone 6 Plus that’s when they started non-integer scaling.
Integer scaling is the only way to really make it look right. Even today Windows looks a tad janky.
@aeva What's the deal about scaling vs changing font DPI? I know it comes with a warning that this is not what you want, but honestly, I feel that changing font DPI is the visually most pleasing way to make things more readable.
@sverik Graphical software that support hidpi essentially decouples the concept of where something is on screen from the underlying screen resolution. This changes resolution from being a space metric to being a density or sharpness metric. The global scale factor is what you used to decide how you want applications to interpret the space available to them. This means everything stays proportionally correct, but also renders nice and sharp.
@sverik so with that in mind, if you leave the scale at 100% and only change the font size what happens is all of the text is comfortable to read, and all of the stuff that isn't text is tiny. Many applications handle this just fine, but nothing looks like it is supposed to.
@sverik also if you leave it at 100%, applications won't be provided a scale from the window manager, and thus won't be able to do the right thing. At best, everything will be kinda shrink wrapped around text that is much much bigger than it.
@aeva run gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']" to enable fractional scaling in gnome. might have to relogin
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