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Comment by whatever1 | Hacker News Reader

Linux was always a Terminal-first OS. The UI efforts never came close to the depth that MacOS and Windows have.

Take for example the scaling issue. It has been now almost half a decade with 4k Displays, and Linux still does not know how to deal with it other than 100% or 200%. Currently Linux is unusable for anyone with a modern display.

I appreciate the work that all the contributors put -for free- in projects like gnome and kde, but unfortunatelly, it is not enough. You need a Giant with financial incentives to drive this, like Google did with Android.

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> Take for example the scaling issue. It has been now almost half a decade with 4k Displays, and Linux still does not know how to deal with it other than 100% or 200%. Currently Linux is unusable for anyone with a modern display.

Fractional scaling works fine on KDE, and it's worked for over a year since I first started using it.

I use two monitors on linux mint with cinnamon. One is a 4k display, and the other a normal display. Display scaling works fine - but once enabled I get a weird bug where I can see a duplicate, frozen mouse cursor on my screen based on where the mouse was in the login prompt. And it hovers on top of all other windows. Somehow the mouse cursor bug is related to the HiDPI scaling options.

I've learned to just use the downstairs toilet. I move the mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen before I log in.

Not sure what you mean. I use a 3440x1440 display with 118% global scaling using KDE.

> Linux still does not know how to deal with it other than 100% or 200%.

I've been using fractional scaling for years. I had to learn how to use xrandr, but it works great. Better than windows or macos in the end, I can specify exactly what I want where.

Funny thing. The company I worked for, bought me a 1440p ultrawide screen to use on my mac at (the same I used home on my linux workstation). It displayed no scaling options whatsoever - NONE. Other displays (4k 16:9) shown it but not that. And unlike linux, or windows you can't even set the font size globally.

Suffice to say, that this isn't a solved problem everywhere else.

On macOS you need to "Option-Click" on Scaled radio button to see full list of resolutions.

The resolution was correct, but the scaling options were hidden.

You need to enable HIDPI then install something like “resolution menu”

Non-integer scaling has been working fine for me for a few years now. I use Fedora + KDE, 175% on my 24" 4K monitor and 225% on 4K 15.6" laptop.

I just had to manually increase the mouse cursor size, and in Firefox change layout.css.devPixelsPerPx to the scaling factor.

I use 4k displays. Everything involving font, chrome, and icon sizes is perfect. Don't know what you are having trouble with.

Glad it works for you. It does not for most of us. Including multi-monitor setups or various glitches in rendering. Google Kubuntu Fractional scaling to have a glimpse.

A few examples:

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1253744/inconsistent-resolut...

https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?f=309&t=164736

https://pointieststick.com/category/high-dpi/

Probably there are workarounds, kernel patches, magic scripts that might solve the above, but honestly I don't have time to spend on these. It should just work. I use an OS to get work done, not to fix the OS.

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