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Comment by libcg | Hacker News Reader

This article makes it seem like these steps are necessary for most Linux setups, when in reality you can do per monitor fractional scaling from a GUI as long as you're using GNOME on Wayland. No need to fiddle with per app settings, it works transparently.

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Except the author is using X11 as many people will. And what this shows is how many different environments / toolkits / settings there are out there. It would be nice if distributions would do a better job of handling this for you. I’ve run into the same issues myself, and it’s kind of hard to believe that I even had to figure out these configuration dpi settings in 2021.

>It would be nice if distributions would do a better job of handling this for you

They did, its called wayland. If you want to use a legacy tool you shouldn't expect it to work as nice as the current generation software.

> If you want to use a legacy tool you shouldn't expect it to work as nice as the current generation software.

I'm not using the "current generation" because it doesn't work as nice as the "legacy" software. Have y'all figured out how to do screen sharing without per-compositor hacks yet?

> Have y'all figured out how to do screen sharing without per-compositor hacks yet?

Yes, it is called Pipewire.

But distros do handle this for you. I installed Arch last year with sway and “it just works”.

Like the OP say, if you want HiDPI fractional scaling that’s a solved problem on Wayland. If you want to stick with X11, then that’s never going to work great

He's using "i3 with a heavily customized userspace" which isn't exactly what most people would use. Gnome on X11 lets you (integer) scale monitors through a GUI at the very least.

Yeah but there’s a very good chance that won’t work with various hardware configurations. I was able to get per-monitor scaling to work only after giving up use of half my GPUs, and still there were problems with several apps. This was on stock Ubuntu; I didn’t get too crazy customizing because I just wanted to find a Linux desktop that worked.

>I was able to get per-monitor scaling to work

X11 is not capable of doing this properly. Wayland is and as you probably know, nvidia refuses to support it which is out of the control of linux developers. You can get everything working if you use the open source nvidia drivers but then they run slow as shit because nvidia blocks them from setting the clock speed on the gpu.

Basically every problem falls back on nvidia and the linux desktop people have done everything in their power to make it work.

> Basically every problem falls back on nvidia

So... get an AMD GPU instead?

Yes, either that or put up with the many problems of X

The point is, you don't have to figure out configuration dpi settings in 2021, if you use distributions as they are supposed to be used.

If you insist on your favorite x11 window manager, the integration is on you. No point in complaining then, it is self-inflicted pain.

> distributions as they are supposed to be used.

As much as i like the concept of Wayland, until it's a one click always works without any caveats option in Ubuntu it essentially doesn't exist. Ubuntu 20.04, the latest of the most popular distributions, does not have wayland enabled by default. They actively discourages you from trying it if you have Nvidia, which again is the most popular gfx card - not sure if one is supposed skip the proprietary drivers or not with Wayland but on X11 using Nouveau is not a pleasant experience.

Ubuntu was criticized for that; every time they release LTS without default Wayland session, they delay the solution for another 2 years.

One of the reason why Apple is able to move fast, that they do not fart around with introducing new and deprecating old things; if you are not ready for that, it is your problem, stick with old release. So most vendors get ready for the new things, because they know there's no way to avoid them. In Linux land, we have people putting hacks on top of other hacks just to avoid switching to the new thing, and in this case, the existing Ubuntu LTS releases are part of the problem.

Also, Nvidia is not the most popular GPU in general. It is a gamer card. Most used GPU is Intel. Intel has some 70% share; the rest is split between Nvidia and AMD.

Nvidia is the most popular graphics for gamers; the most popular graphics for general computer users is integrated with an Intel CPU.

That hasn’t been the case for me with Ubuntu or raspbian.

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