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High-DPI displays and Linux

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Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#31

Post by pestaa »

guardian5x wrote: post #29
marcosdumay wrote: post #24

I see that phrasing all the time: "Well, KDE can do what we are looking for, but GNOME does it in a hackish way. As we use GNOME, our review is all about it, and as a conclusion, Linux is no good." Why do these people insist on using GNOME after all?

Or they could just use Windows. But that also wouldn't be hackish enough.

I think parent referred to KDE as the most mature environment available on Linux, the one this article should have been written about.

In my mind, KDE is also superior to Windows in many ways anyway.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#32

Post by graycoder »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26

I have a Thinkpad Yoga 2 Pro (3200x1800 @ 13"), and often use an external monitor. My "solution" is to turn off HiDPI and rely on the zoom features in all of my apps. (terminal, emacs & browsers) Browser windows on the laptop usually run at a zoom of 200%, whereas windows on the external display run at 90%. Annoying, but the beautiful text is worth the bother.

What OS/Distro do you run? I've read some rather worrying things about the linux support and haven't taken windows off yet. I've been living in VMs, which are surprisingly snappy.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#33

Post by ultramancool »

andmarios wrote: post #30
ultramancool wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imo Linux, KDE and most other software works nicely with HiDPI. Having written some Qt apps and used them on scaled screens... eh. It's got some work to go, but we're making progress. Apparently Qt 5.4 will have further improvements in this field too.

If we are talking about complete resolution independence I agree. Currently on two monitors with the same physical dimensions but different resolution you can't get a common rendering. But you can get a decent rendering from both of them, albeit a bit different; one for example will have a tad larger icons, the other maybe a little larger fonts,etc.

Yeah, differing monitor DPIs is still a terrible experience on every OS except OS X in my experience. I've gone so far as to use separate machines and Synergy to get around multi-DPI issues on Windows and Linux.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#34

Post by simonh »

andmarios wrote: post #30
ultramancool wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imo Linux, KDE and most other software works nicely with HiDPI. Having written some Qt apps and used them on scaled screens... eh. It's got some work to go, but we're making progress. Apparently Qt 5.4 will have further improvements in this field too.

If we are talking about complete resolution independence I agree. Currently on two monitors with the same physical dimensions but different resolution you can't get a common rendering. But you can get a decent rendering from both of them, albeit a bit different; one for example will have a tad larger icons, the other maybe a little larger fonts,etc.

I suppose this is why Apple went to 5K for the 27" iMac. It's exactly double the pixel dimensions of the non-5K version, so everything looks exactly the same size but with higher fidelity.

Not necessarily a big deal for consumers, but vital for professionals that have preferred working screen layouts on their old machines and don't want to change that on the new ones.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#35

Post by vkjv »

zorbo wrote: post #17
Aardwolf wrote: post #12

Somewhere in the 90's, games were in 320x200 pixel resolution, and the Windows 3.11 desktop was 640x480 pixels or so on a typical 386 computer. Then up to around the year 2000, resolutions increased, going through such stages as 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 (your CRT would flicker if much higher, and then LCDs came along pinning it at 1280x1024 for 17"). Then the resolution (or especially DPI) growth basically sto…

Resolution growth didn't really stop. It's just that vertical resolution growth took a huge backseat to horizontal res growth for a decade or so. I guess since vertical growth didn't really occur, there was little need for UI scaling.

No, it stopped. I just tossed a 10 year old CRT with a 2560x2048 resolution. The key is that tech switched over to favoring LCDs which are finally catching up, and in some cases, passing CRT.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#36

Post by sampo »

yaantc wrote: post #13
bitL wrote: post #9

If your display is over 1080p (I use 1920x1200), Linux (at least Mint 17) switches to HiDPI by default, reducing my effective resolution to 960x600... There is some obscure setting that can switch HiDPI off, but it's a mess overall for the time being as some apps still use HiDPI (like gdm).

I have the same display with Debian and no issue. So it's either introduced by Mint or Ubuntu (Mint is Ubuntu derived). Most likely by Mint, as the UI customization is very distro specific.

Must be Mint. Ubuntu's Unity has an adjustable slider for scaling under Display settings.

Or more precisely, this is a Desktop Environment thing, not a distro thing. So whatever DE /u/bitL is using in their Mint (Cinnamon?) is the culprit.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#37

Post by Htsthbjig »

Aardwolf wrote: post #12

Somewhere in the 90's, games were in 320x200 pixel resolution, and the Windows 3.11 desktop was 640x480 pixels or so on a typical 386 computer. Then up to around the year 2000, resolutions increased, going through such stages as 800x600, 1024x768 and 1280x1024 (your CRT would flicker if much higher, and then LCDs came along pinning it at 1280x1024 for 17"). Then the resolution (or especially DPI) growth basically sto…

We used over 3000 minimun pixel length CRTs at work.

But they were complete monsters(they were deeper than x, y dimensions), not good for your eyes either,needed filters, some X rays will hit your face.

We replaced them with much cheaper(and not as good quality) LCDs arrays. They were so cheap that you could buy 6 for the price of 1 high quality display.

What happened is very simple, LCD technology did not benefit from CRT advances in resolution, as they are completely orthogonal technologies, and people bought cheap panels.

The other change was 3D. We used 2D acceleration cards back in the day, but consumers made little use of them, but they started playing 3D games a lot.

Comparing original Lemmings "sprite changing 100 small parts of the screen" with Call of duty "millions of polygons moving in 3d at real time" does not make very much sense.

So the cards evolved from accelerating a static 2D image or document on the screen like professionals needed, to updating a 3D screen 60 times per second, which is much more complex.

After LED backlighting(too expensive before) smartphones ,tablets and TVs mass producing even cheaper panels quality has improved a lot.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#38

Post by sampo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #26

I have a Thinkpad Yoga 2 Pro (3200x1800 @ 13"), and often use an external monitor. My "solution" is to turn off HiDPI and rely on the zoom features in all of my apps. (terminal, emacs & browsers) Browser windows on the laptop usually run at a zoom of 200%, whereas windows on the external display run at 90%. Annoying, but the beautiful text is worth the bother.

At least Firefox has its own setting for scaling. This way 200% text does not break webpage layouts, as it far too commonly does.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#39

Post by jeorgun »

marcosdumay wrote: post #24

I see that phrasing all the time: "Well, KDE can do what we are looking for, but GNOME does it in a hackish way. As we use GNOME, our review is all about it, and as a conclusion, Linux is no good." Why do these people insist on using GNOME after all?

I assume you haven't used both GNOME and KDE on a high-DPI monitor, because KDE's support for it is certainly not better. Qt themes don't scale, web views don't scale, icon, window, plasma panel, etc sizes need to be configured independently of font DPI, some applications just fritz out at high DPI font sizes. I've tested both 4.13 and 5.3, and haven't noticed any significant improvement in the latter. I'm a fan of KDE, but on my high-DPI laptop, I'm using GNOME purely because its "hackish" solution does work a lot better.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#40

Post by sampo »

marcosdumay wrote: post #24

I see that phrasing all the time: "Well, KDE can do what we are looking for, but GNOME does it in a hackish way. As we use GNOME, our review is all about it, and as a conclusion, Linux is no good." Why do these people insist on using GNOME after all?

My guess is psychology: The default theme in KDE looks really alien, after having used Ubuntu for a long time. I am sure there would be a familiar looking Ambiance theme for KDE, too, but maybe people give up before trying to change and tweak themes.
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