Wuuttup. I’m here complaining again about Framework’s Linux unfriendly display. The new one this time.
https://frame.work/products/display-kit?v=FRANJF0001
Old display, 2256 x 1504 (3:2)
GNOME
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
100% scale + large text accessibility
- Nothing looks blurry
- Most apps scale appropriately
- Some apps don’t respect GNOME’s large text setting (Alacritty)
125% scale
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
Plasma
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
125% scale + Apply scaling themselves
- Nothing looks blurry
- Most apps scale appropriate
- Some apps can’t scale themselves and look tiny (Picard)
125% scale + Scaled by system
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
New display, 2880 x 1920 (3:2)
GNOME
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
100% scale + large text accessibility
- Nothing looks blurry
- Most apps scale appropriately
- Some apps don’t respect GNOME’s large text setting (Alacritty)
- Everything is tiny
150% scale
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
Plasma
100% scale
- Nothing looks blurry
- Everything is tiny
- Unusable
150% scale + Apply scaling themselves
- Nothing looks blurry
- Some apps can’t scale themselves, but look a little better here? (Picard)
150% scale + Scaled by system
- Most apps look blurry (Picard, Firefox, Spotify, Alacritty)
200% scale
- Everything is way too big
- Unusable
tl;dr
In the old display, GNOME at 100% + large text was the best compromise. In the new display, Plasma at 150% + Apply scaling themselves is the best compromise.
Interestingly, Picard scaling itself looks super tiny in the old display, but in the new display it looks… better. It’s still not correctly scaled like native Wayland apps, but it’s better.
Warning
If you can’t stomach moving from GNOME to Plasma, then 🚨 DO NOT BUY THE NEW DISPLAY 🚨. The new display is worse for GNOME.
Once again
I am once again begging Framework to just give us a damn regular DPI display that works! Without workarounds. Without forcing users on specific DEs. Without forcing users to stop using their favorite apps. This new display has basically all of the flaws as the previous one.
Bottom Skinner is right, though. It’s 2024. HiDPI has to be supported by all toolkits, desktops, and applications at this point. There are no excuses. Even 1080p on a 14" laptop screen warrants 125% scaling, IMO.
“This hardware works fine and even has compatible software that it works great with. But I’m going to prefer the broken software for other reasons. And that means it’s the hardware’s fault.”
Software that is built to be compatible with a wide variety of hardware should be compatible with a wide variety of hardware.
If software can’t handle a 16.5:16 aspect ratio, then that’s bad software. I don’t care how weird of a niche thing that is… just make your software abstract enough to handle those cases.
It’s 2024, any resolution/aspect ratio/DPI combo should be supportable. There’s enough variety of monitors out there that we should have a solution for handling things on the fly without needing to have a predefined solution.
Scaling for HiDPI displays is unacceptable on every desktop OS, it is crazy that so little effort has been put into making the experience of modern monitors good.
I feel this is one of those few sectors, like wifi compatibility, where Windows completely destroys Linux, MacOS, and BSD. As someone who regularly switches between operating systems on bare metal & 4K, trying to use a HiDPI display on *nix is painful and will only kinda work with caveats after 100 hacks (as seen here), whereas Windows has a zoom slider that just works.
macOS seems to handle this pretty well, honestly. About the only issue I have is XQuartz and even it’s pretty good.
What’s the issue you’re seeing?
Scaling, MacOS has no actual scaling it will only lower the resolution, and using Retina on anything that isn’t sold in an Apple store (and even then) just simply does not work. It essentially has no HiDPI support past using native resolution with slightly larger text that is not adhered to by most of the operating system itself. I am at a loss at why you think this is well handled, what criteria are you using?