KDE's HiDPI Scaling Support For X11 Is Getting Into Better Shape

[phoronix]

Phoronix: KDE's HiDPI Scaling Support For X11 Is Getting Into Better Shape

While KDE on Wayland has generally enjoyed good HiDPI support, it's now taken until 2021 for KDE's X11 HiDPI support to be in a position of greater usability after evolving over the years...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-X11-Better-HiDPI-2021

[tildearrow]

I've been using PLASMA_USE_QT_SCALING=1 for a while and it seems to be working well for the most part (does require wiping the Plasma cache though, but otherwise no problem).

Sometimes the panels get misplaced when I turn my monitor off and on....

[skeevy420]

Why X11? **insert something about Wayland being superior**

Hurp a durp CLA derpidy dee Qt 5.13.

Anyhoo,

I like boring, not feature filled updates like this. As an end user I appreciate stability and quality of life improvements even more so than new features and abilities.

[bple2137]

I could pay for having HiDPI on Xwayland on KDE Plasma. It's the only reason I'm using GNOME right now even though I don't like so many things about it.

[reba]

I could pay for having HiDPI on Xwayland on KDE Plasma. It's the only reason I'm using GNOME right now even though I don't like so many things about it.

If you like, there a ways:

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[ngraham]

I could pay for having HiDPI on Xwayland on KDE Plasma. It's the only reason I'm using GNOME right now even though I don't like so many things about it.

XWayland HiDPI support is an upstream issue in the relevant Wayland protocol itself, not any issue with any KDE software.

[bple2137]

XWayland HiDPI support is an upstream issue in the relevant Wayland protocol itself, not any issue with any KDE software.

I'm aware of that, but it seems like Xorg devs don't care and won't accept necessary patches for Xwayland, because their feelings about their code base are much more important than usability. Still, this issue is pretty bad for HiDPI (gaming) and there at least should be some user-applicable hack to work around the problem.

[ngraham]

I'm aware of that, but it seems like Xorg devs don't care and won't accept necessary patches for Xwayland, because their feelings about their code base are much more important than usability. Still, this issue is pretty bad for HiDPI (gaming) and there at least should be some user-applicable hack to work around the problem.

Not sure what you mean exactly. Can you point to me to some relevant links that show the bottleneck? Maybe I can help.

[MadeUpName]

As long as it doesn't harm any one else what people do with their time, money and effort is their own business. But it still seems like a weird place to put your efforts when distros have already started moving to KDE on Wayland as the default. X will be around for a long time. But the people sticking to X long term are very unlikely to need HiDPI. Personally I am far more interested in color management, wide color spaces and HDR on wayland but my understanding is that those are all wayland bottlenecks.

[ngraham]

As long as it doesn't harm any one else what people do with their time, money and effort is their own business. But it still seems like a weird place to put your efforts when distros have already started moving to KDE on Wayland as the default. X will be around for a long time. But the people sticking to X long term are very unlikely to need HiDPI. Personally I am far more interested in color management, wide color spaces and HDR on wayland but my understanding is that those are all wayland bottlenecks.

I'm the person who implemented the change on X11 and I don't understand this attitude at all. Can you help me understand it? I have a 14" laptop with a 4k screen and I want hidpi to work properly on X11. Using X11 doesn't magically make my hardware reduce its DPI so that hidpi support is unimportant.

The reason why I made this change is because I'm still on X11 about 80% of the time because Wayland isn't yet annoyance-free enough for me to make it my permanent daily driver. At this point Plasma and KWin and other KDE software are in quite a good state, but a lot of 3rd-party software is a mess. This is particularly the case for hidpi support; a lot of apps have perfectly functional hidpi support on X11 but not Wayland because of needing to run through XWayland which dumbly upscales everything rather than making use of any existing X11-specific hidpi support than an app may have. This affects Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC, and other big-name apps that are not yet Wayland-native by default. Other apps are Wayland-native but don't do hidpi support properly, such as LibreOffice. So in my case, hidpi is actually better on X11 than it is on Wayland.

Yes, Wayland is the future. But it's not quite there yet. And my skills are not sufficient to help push it along; Wayland stuff is really super technical and very low level. If I had not fixed this specific hidpi issue on X11, it's not like I would have instead used that time to fix a Wayland issue instead.