Individual GNOME applications [LWN.net]

Individual GNOME applications

Posted Jun 25, 2025 15:00 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341)
In reply to: Individual GNOME applications by farnz
Parent article: GNOME deepens systemd dependencies

Hmm... the thing is, you can still change the resolution on external monitors to suit. You don't per se need to have Linux do the scaling.

The only time I notice scaling issues now is with xpra to apps running on a server and I havn't set dpi to 48 with xrandr. It doesn't seem to affect any local apps on the HiDPI laptop, but scaling of /1/ particular app (which seems to use some custom toolkit in Java that renders via OpenGL) can be off. Other than, things have been fine for years, with my HiDPI laptop and the monitors I plug into anyway (1 of which is one of those large, v wide Dell ones).

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Individual GNOME applications

Posted Jun 25, 2025 15:12 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Well, depends on the display and the attachment method; my external monitor flickers wildly at any resolutions other than CEA-861 predefined resolutions (and I've not bothered to work out why - there's a firmware update available, but I'd have to get a Windows machine sorted to apply it). No trouble at 640x480, 2880x576, 1280x720 or 3840x2160, but huge trouble at 2560x1440@60Hz. I therefore need Linux to do the scaling, because the scale I'm asking for would need the monitor to run at 2560x1440.

And I also find that Linux is better at doing the scaling than the monitor is; text is easier to read when the application renders for a 5120x2880 monitor, and then the compositor downscales to 3840x2160, than it is when the application renders for 2560x1440, and the monitor or the compositor upscales to 3840x2160.