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High-DPI displays and Linux

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Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#41

Post by zumtar »

enobrev wrote: post #27
andmarios wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear to me why Linux running on a retina mac wouldn't have the same resolution problems as Linux running on PC hardware with a similar display.

It absolutely has the same resolution problems. I'm running ubuntu 14.10 on a macbook pro with a retina screen (installed from scratch last week). TweakUI helps make unity look better. Google Chrome's UI looks terrible, although setting the default page scaling to 150% does pretty well for browsing.

I'm running 14.10 (and previous versions for about year) on an Ultrabook with a HiDPI screen that is actually a higher resolution than the MBP's Retina display.

ten@vekony:~$ xdpyinfo | grep dimensions

dimensions: 3200x1800 pixels (846x476 millimeters)

I've set the scale to 1.38 for menu and titles bars (in the Screen Display settings) and everything looks great.

Chrome is a nightmare, there are some builds of Chromium that are better with HiDPI support, but Firefox works perfectly with the setting "layout.css.devPixelsPerPx" set to 1.8.

I've also set the text scaling factor to 1.58 (Using Unity Tweak Tool).

There is a good Arch Linux wiki page with some HiDPI tips - https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI

I'm completely happy with the results and when I use my Wife's MacBook Air I think there is something wrong with my eyes as the difference is really noticeable.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#42

Post by phkahler »

For web browsers I thought CTRL+ and CRTL- were for dealing with this, but I think that is stored on a site by site basis. Something similar for the UI would be nice too, but IMHO should be kept independent of the "data" the app displays.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#43

Post by phkahler »

georgeecollins wrote: post #15
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…

Game developers don't traditionally think about their games in terms of DPI. Think about it: a game is played on a TV ot Monitor that can display 1920x1080 pixels, but what size is it? 23" diagonal? 30" diagonal? .. etc. Game developers these days usually think of a PC or console game display in terms of pixel count and aspect ratio, not DPI

When you use OpenGL to map textures onto triangles it gets handled automatically. You might get a quality setting which enables higher resolution textures. That's often there for tuning performance on different hardware, but the effect is higher resolution textures.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#44

Post by gurkendoktor »

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…

In the 90's/2000's, typical screen size also grew from 15" to 20"+, so the DPI didn't really change a lot, did it? The text size in OS X has never been adjustable, and in Windows 95+ you could only tweak it from 100% to 150% or so, which would still look good next to text that had a fixed size.

This time, the screen size stays the same, but the DPI goes through the roof.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#45

Post by jackalope »

I thought the whole point of High-DPI was to was to free us from the need to render graphics pixel-perfect at native resolution. While scaling bitmaps will probably be necessary for photographs and most video for a long time, can't everything else be rendered using SVG? Does such an environment already exist?

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#46

Post by bhauer »

vkjv wrote: post #35
zorbo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't agree that the stagnation in resolution evolution was an artifact of the CRT to LCD conversion. I put the blame on the convergence of the living room and desktop display markets and the disturbing marketing effectiveness of the "HD" moniker [1].

Resolution didn't simply stagnate; it regressed. In approximately 2000, Dell sold laptops with 1600x1200 LCD displays. Once "HD" appeared, display manufacturers lost interest in resolutions higher than 1920x1080. For several years to a decade, the most common top resolution was 1920x1080 and many mid and low-spec laptops were sold with shockingly poor 1024x768 and 1366x768 resolutions. (The 2560x1600 30-inch monitors appeared on the market as a prosumer option in ~2004 but these were tainted by their own blight--a fixed price of $1,100 that never wavered--and didn't see any compelling competition until the Korean and Chinese manufacturers disrupted the incumbents.)

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/hd-sucks

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#47

Post by aruggirello »

pestaa wrote: post #31
guardian5x wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

KDE is my desktop environment of choice since I first installed it, after years of Windows, Gnome, and after several months (each) of Unity, XFCE and LXDE. IMHO nothing beats KDE overall, save perhaps OSX.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#48

Post by krakensden »

enobrev wrote: post #27
andmarios wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unclear to me why Linux running on a retina mac wouldn't have the same resolution problems as Linux running on PC hardware with a similar display.

It absolutely has the same resolution problems. I'm running ubuntu 14.10 on a macbook pro with a retina screen (installed from scratch last week). TweakUI helps make unity look better. Google Chrome's UI looks terrible, although setting the default page scaling to 150% does pretty well for browsing.

Chrome ditched Gtk+ a few months ago and wrote their own GUI toolkit, which is why it doesn't work.

Re: High-DPI displays and Linux

#49

Post by AdmiralAsshat »

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…

Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/732/
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