Fedora 20 & Apple thunderbolt monitor - it just works!!!

[Chris Adams]

Once upon a time, Tim <ignored_mailbox at yahoo.com.au> said:
> Allegedly, on or about 27 March 2014, Suvayu Ali sent:
> > I think you can fix this by configuring your fonts to be higher dpi
> > (on XFCE I can do this in Settings >> Appearance >> Fonts).  With the
> > fonts bigger, I think your desktop environment will choose bigger
> > icons automatically. 
> 
> Futzing the DPI is not really a good idea, and should only be done as a
> last resort.  Firstly, GUI designers ought to make it easy for user to
> select the font AND icon sizes that they want, properly.  If people
> stopped futzing the DPI, there might be more pressure placed on them to
> do that.

Setting the DPI to the display's value is not the same as "futzing" it.
IIRC the default is set to 96 dpi, and the actual hardware display size
is ignored.  If you have a display that is significantly different from
96 dpi, setting it can help.

IIRC from previous discussions, there are a number of reasons the
reported hardware display size is not used:

- On some displays, the makers report wrong values (sometimes wildly
  inaccurate).

- A single DPI setting is really not correct, as multi-display setups
  can be different size, resolution, etc.  Also, notebooks switching
  from internal display to external (even if both aren't active at the
  same time) can cause changes.

- Not everything applies DPI in the same way.  Firefox for example IIRC
  uses it for fonts but not CSS layout.  You can override that in
  about:config, but then it starts scaling images (often making them
  fuzzy) and makes things worse instead of better.

-- 
Chris Adams <linux at cmadams.net>