[GTALUG] issues with "fractional scaling" for displays
D. Hugh Redelmeier
hugh at mimosa.com
Tue Nov 21 13:53:51 EST 2023
In GNOME (and surely other systems) you can specify that you want the
contents of the display scaled. For example, 200% scaling doubles the
size of everything on the display in both dimensions.
The control for selecting scaling is in GNOME's "Display Settings", under
"scale". Easiest way to get there: right-click on empty part of the
desktop and select "Display Settings"
This is useful if you have a HiDpi (high resolution) display and low
resolution eyes. Note: this is different from changing the display
itself to a different resolution.
Scaling by integral amounts has been available for a long time. But it
isn't that useful. It would be better if the system could handle scaling
by non-integral amounts like 125%.
For example, I have a 13.3" with 2560x1600 resolution. 100% scaling
is very fine. Sometimes 150% scaling is easier to read.
Wayland allows this non-integral scaling. Yay!
XWayland copes poorly with this: everything gets a bit fuzzy, even at
integral scaling points (but perhaps not at 100%).
XWayland is used by programs that use the X Window System APIs.
(I don't even know which programs that I use are using XWayland so I
don't know how badly this would affect me.)
I was looking forward to fractional scaling in Fedora 39 / GNOME 45.
But it seems to be turned off, again:
See <https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/357>
It appears that the Fedora folk think that:
1. fuzziness at integral scaling in XWayland is unacceptable
2. making a clear user choice "fuzziness is OK" isn't reasonable
Fractional scaling has been available before this with a magic
incantation. I haven't tested it with Fedora 39.
$ dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"
This only takes effect after the next login.
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