Wayland Protocol Finally Ready For Fractional Scaling

[darkbasic]

It's quite a shame 4K adoption isn't going faster. I've been using it for over 5 years and can never go back.
Pair that with a high refresh rate and you're in heaven.

I wouldn't call me spoiled, just logical as someone sitting in front of a monitor 10+ hours a day.

I would rather get a 5K monitor and get rid of the fractional scaling required with 4K (otherwise it would map to 1920x1080 which would be a massive downgrade in terms of screen real estate compared to 2560x1440).

[darkbasic]

Running common 4k monitors in 200% scale is tolerable

Bearable? Yes. Worth the upgrade from 2560x1440? No.

[regs]

Good, but GTK itself doesn't support fractional scaling. And they have been clear on that - they won't support it.

[regs]

Demand for fractional scaling support mostly stem from those tiny 1080p laptop screens. Running common 4k monitors in 200% scale is tolerable. But for 1080p laptop screen, the 200% scaled screen space is not enough for many program / system dialogs designed after 640x480 is history.

27-34" 4K screens are 150%
20-24" 4K are 200%

15.6" 2K (1080p) are also 150%

[amxfonseca]

I would rather get a 5K monitor and get rid of the fractional scaling required with 4K (otherwise it would map to 1920x1080 which would be a massive downgrade in terms of screen real estate compared to 2560x1440).

The problem is that there isn’t any competitive offer for a 27” 5K display, it is mostly one from Apple and an old LG model. Screen makers insist on producing only 4K or crappy low resolution panels.

I have a 4K screen that I use with 1.5x scaling, so I get the same UI density of an equivalent 1440p screen. It works quite nice since I mostly use MacOS, which is still the best OS when it comes to scaling and color management.

Running it at 2x makes the UI too big and you lose all the space. If I could buy a decent 5K screen for around 500-800€ I would immediately do it. But there are no offers. Only low resolution gaming screens with 3 million hertz and 7 picosecond response time.

[Charlie68]

I think some compositors are aware, but due to how wayland works im not sure it's much of an issue. at the very least, sway seems to work fine, I haven't dug into it though.



The entry price for a 4k monitor is around 350 cad, 4k is increasingly more affordable and is being adopted more often due to the low entry bar for an acceptable 4k display

I don't doubt this, but the most used resolution today remains full-hd. Ubuntu had also made available the data in their possession, on the type of hardware in use and among these there was also the monitor, the vast majority use full-hd monitors (typically 1920×1080), but there are still many devices that are still with 720p resolution, the quota for 4K devices is very low.
Surely this will change in perspective, but I want to say that it is certainly a good thing that wayland supports fractional scaling, however we must remember that things tend to come later on Linux, so as a longtime Linux user, I have learned to wait before buy latest generation technologies.
If I had to change my monitor of course I would go for a 4K but generally people don't change monitors or TVs every year.

[Charlie68]

I suppose you don't know me but I have 3 not including a couple high dpi laptop screens. They are affordable, nice to read on, and work very well with macOS. The Linux situation is a lot messier and I've found the easiest approach is to set the scale factor in sway but it makes Xorg blurry. Setting font sizes etc. really falls apart with multiple distinct displays.

As I wrote in a previous message, technology evolves quickly, however Linux is much slower, so as a Linux user who doesn't want complications, I always wait for new technologies to become less and less new and more widespread, because I know very well how Linux works.
Of course the Mac is the Mac and there will also be a reason why it has such a high cost.

[darkbasic]

The problem is that there isn’t any competitive offer for a 27” 5K display, it is mostly one from Apple and an old LG model. Screen makers insist on producing only 4K or crappy low resolution panels.

I have a 4K screen that I use with 1.5x scaling, so I get the same UI density of an equivalent 1440p screen. It works quite nice since I mostly use MacOS, which is still the best OS when it comes to scaling and color management.

Running it at 2x makes the UI too big and you lose all the space. If I could buy a decent 5K screen for around 500-800€ I would immediately do it. But there are no offers. Only low resolution gaming screens with 3 million hertz and 7 picosecond response time.

I know the feeling, it's the same for me but I'm stuck with 2560x1440 because fractional scaling sucks in Linux.
I would be willing to pay 800€ for a 5K screen but at that price range it should also be wide gamut, hardware calibrated, HDR1000+ and 120Hz+. Such monitors recently started to exist in 4K variants, but will never exist as 5K. Also Wayland needs to support HDR to be worth buying.

[openminded]

Seeing how long it took.
I don't think most of us will live to see a Linux desktop/notebook running a basic DE pushing HDR to your capable screen/tv.

If devs would focus on all random bugs in Plasma, Gnome, and so on, I don't mind that there's no HDR support. Frankly, it's just a minor thing. I'd rather have some robust wireless display implementation than HDR support.

[openminded]

Steam survey shows 3.63% of users have > 1440p monitors. About 15% at 1440p, and the vast majority still at 1080p.

It doesn't mean people shouldn't work on something that will prevail only in years to come. And also, as someone mentioned as well, there's a big amount of 1080p displays that are too small to be used without fractional scaling -- without swearing from time to time.