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Comment by whatever1 | Hacker News Reader

It is so sad that for us not in the Apple Ecosystem it is impossible to find a desktop HiDPI display. We are stuck in 4k for the past 5 years. This Dell is the only "option", but I don't know how many of us can afford spending $5k on a monitor with a lifetime of ~ 3 years that has not shown great reliability.

Meanwhile, Linux has made the lives of 4k display owners unlivable due to the lack of non-integer scaling. A 5k display with 200% scaling at 27" would help the situation, but we don't have that option.

Many times I have considered jumping on to the MacOS boat, just for the high dpi display availability & scaling support advantage.

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> A 5k display with 200% scaling at 27" would help the situation, but we don't have that option.

I'm reading this thread using the LG 5K monitor with Linux, mostly working fine.

I have two 5K 27" displays with 200% scaling on Linux- perfect HiDPI setup. Lookup the Planar IX2790.

The Dell P2415Q would be my runner-up recommendation: https://www.dell.com/en-us/work/shop/dell-24-ultra-hd-4k-mon...

I used one of them for a few years.

A colleague of mine uses 2 HP Z27q 5K displays and is happy with them: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04591534

HP and Dell made 5k monitors back in 2014, but they were both discontinued pretty fast.

Is there no way to use an LG 5K?

The bad thing about the 8K is needing a $500 video card which also means it's not an option for laptop users (I guess you could with an eGPU

There are some very hacky ways that involve special add-on cards for the motherboard, special motherboard model requirements, gpu connector requirements and even special software to adjust the brightness.

It is doable, but it is expensive, and it may or may not work properly. One example that I remember is one where some users who attempted the above setup reported that they need to unplug & re-plug the monitor after it sleeps.

The blog author is using a GTX 1060, that's a $400 video card that came out nearly 4 years ago.

Today a <$200 GTX 1650 can output 7680x4320@120Hz, or 60Hz over a single DP link.

And I don't see why a laptop with a proper GPU and TB3 dock couldn't drive it either.

He states he uses a 2070 now.

I’m fine using a hidpi monitor with Linux but this is probably because I only really use about three programs:

- Chrome which you need to pass a command line arg with your (not necessarily integer) scaling factor

- emacs which just reads the dpi from xresources

- xmonad/xmobar which barely have user interfaces but where you can specify pixel sizes for fonts if they get it wrong.

- terminal emulator which I think just looks at xresources for dpi.

Maybe other programs don’t work so well.

> Meanwhile, Linux has made the lives of 4k display owners unlivable due to the lack of non-integer scaling.

I had no problems at all setting 1.3 scaling in monitor settings (Fedora/Gnome 3)

This is just wrong. PCs work fine with 5K 27" displays like the LG Ultrafine 27MD5KA.

Personally, I prefer the 5K2K 34" screens though like LG 34WK95U or MSI Prestige PS341WU.

LG does not support non apple software/hardware for that monitor. You can hack your PC with TB cards and special motherboards that support these cards to show signal, sometimes. This is far away from "works fine".

Probably just because it's older.

Newer 5K displays like the two I mentioned (including LG) do support Windows. You don't need any hacks as long as you have TB3 support.

There is also the ProLite XB2779QQS-S1 and Planar IX2790 if you want full 5K at 27".

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