scale or change monitor resolution on high dpi

[Anil Felipe Duggirala]

Hello,
I have a laptop with a high dpi monitor, 4k on a 15" screen. 'Im on F36, Gnome.
I'm wondering whats the better alternative, change the resolution of the display or use scaling? (performance and usability)
Is there any update on fractional scaling? It didn't work last time I tried it (just really weird behavior, on Wayland at least).

thanks,

Anil F

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Anil Felipe Duggirala

| I have a laptop with a high dpi monitor, 4k on a 15" screen. 'Im on F36, Gnome.
| I'm wondering whats the better alternative, change the resolution of the display or use scaling? (performance and usability)
| Is there any update on fractional scaling? It didn't work last time I tried it (just really weird behavior, on Wayland at least).

Fractional scaling works for me.  But maybe I don't do anything
tricky.  There may be a better way, but this is what I use:

dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

Yeah, my 15.6" UltraHD notebook display is a little too high
resolution to use straight.

In less extreme cases, I adjust each browser or terminal window
as-needed, when needed.

One hopes that Gnome scaling does a better job of anti-aliasing than
running the display in a non-native resolution.  But I don't actually
know.

As an experiment, I looked at text in a Gnome Terminal on my UltraHD
15.6" display.  Without any scaling settings, each character looks
beautifully formed, even when examined through a magnifying glass.  It
is still beautiful after three or four shrinks.  Perhaps nothing is
lost just pretending the screen is FullHD.  But that's just text.

I'm sure fonts are better on Gnome Terminal than on xterm (I used that
for about 20 years).

[Anil Felipe Duggirala]

On Sat, Jul 9, 2022, at 12:20 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> Fractional scaling works for me.  But maybe I don't do anything
> tricky.  There may be a better way, but this is what I use:
>
> dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/experimental-features 
> "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

Thanks for this. That is what I did too. It just seems terribly buggy.
Ive heard people saying this might work better on Xorg, is that maybe correct?
> One hopes that Gnome scaling does a better job of anti-aliasing than
> running the display in a non-native resolution.  But I don't actually
> know.

Well. Ive now tried, and using the 1920x1080 resolution does make everything look less defined, including fonts.

thanks for your help Hugh,

[Tim]

D. Hugh Redelmeier:
> > One hopes that Gnome scaling does a better job of anti-aliasing than
> > running the display in a non-native resolution.  But I don't
> > actually know.

Anil Felipe Duggirala:
> Well. Ive now tried, and using the 1920x1080 resolution does make
> everything look less defined, including fonts.

That's the result I would expect.  If you send a non-native resolution
to the monitor, it will have to scale it.  It's difficult for a screen
to show something that doesn't match it's pixel count (CRTs were better
for that, as graphics pixels were never a 1:1 match for CRT pixels, the
electron beam scanned across them, and the screen naturally softened
things a bit).

But when it comes to things like fonts, if you generate them at the
size you want, for the native resolution of the whole system (graphics
card and monitor), that's always got to have the best results.

Things like images either scale reasonably well or rather badly, it
depends on their content.