HiDPI and inconsistent 2x windows scaling

Hi folks,

Former Antergos user here. It’s fantastic to see the community move on to this new project, which I’m excited to try out. Speaking of which…

I downloaded the latest ISO yesterday and gave it a spin in the live session. I’ve not used XFCE before, but I found the HiDPI a little lacking out of the box. (I’m on a Dell Precision 5530.)

In particular, setting 2 x Windows Scaling creates some weird artifacts in the bottom toolbar. It also doesn’t scale the menu fonts. See the attached image. (Excuse the slight blurriness; I’m rushing and that’s just my image exporter.)

Any ideas on how to fix?
Thanks!

Screenshot_endeavour-1

Do you try already to use a bigger font for window titles/menus ? XFCE is improving hidpi settings on the last update, so may there are some settings missing you do not find… I do not own such display…

Thanks Joe.

I tried using bigger fonts and that does fix things. Kind of.

Changing the font immediately improves the window titles. It also fixes the weird scaling artifact for the global menu button on the bottom left-hand corner… However, it doesn’t fix the scaling artifacts on the bottom right-hand indicator menu (shutdown, clock, battery, etc.)

Another interesting observation is that, once I increase the font, I can then revert back to the original Noto Sans 10 and it is now perfectly scaled. With the remaining exception of the bottom-right corner menu.

Okay, I just installed the ISO on a VM to see if the problems were limited to HiDPI environments. They aren’t (more on this below)… BUT, everything is correctly scaled as long as I log out and in again.

So solution appears to be as simple as:

  • Set the 2x scaling (Settings → Appearance → Settings → Windows Scaling). Most elements will be correctly scaled immediately, although there will be several noticeable exceptions.
  • Log out and back in again. Now everything should hopefully be correctly scaled. No need to adjust fonts.

I’ll report back if I have any problems after installing the ISO on my actual machine. In the meantime, since these issues don’t appear to be limited to HiDPI, I’d appreciate it if anyone feels like testing on a regular system :slight_smile:

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I think I might try out xfce again, with your advice! I’m currently using Deepin as the scaling just works. But I wanted to use xfce.