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.
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Try changing display resolution instead of scaling. Scaling was always a hack.
Scaling is the future, too low set resolution was always the hack…
No, the problem is, built-in displays have too high resolution for their usecase (because vendors can demand more cash for it). Things don’t get less sharp if you scale that (via resolution) to comfortale size, your angular resolution doesn’t get better just with that. You don’t lose pixels you can’t see.
The hack is the solution that sometimes works and sometimes not, which is the case with software scaling.And your “future” is at least five years ago.
🤣🤣WTF are you talking
Setting scale down makes everything looks shit! Are you blind?! The pixels are fucking gigantic if you do this. I go through up if I have to use lowDPI screens, evry usecase demands at least 2k or better 3kfor me (at 14”). Speaking desktop 32” 4k it is.
Usecase matters for pixel density. You have the phone close to your face, 400 dpi are just enough here. Notebook, more far away, is about 300 dpi ideal. Desktop, about 200 dpi. This is why a TV, usually 3m+ away, has about 65" in 4k. But if you sit 1m before your TV, you see big pixels.
Now, for notebook, usual size of 13" to 17", resolution between 1280x and 2560x is good. You see no pixels, no battery draining and fan noise, and no issues with some tool not/weird scaling.
Ah you know what, please read here.
You want hardware manufacturers to provide shitty screens in perpetuity just so Linux devs can avoid implementing proper scaling? Yeah, no.
Just to make sure, have you logged out and back in after applying the scaling? Some apps look blurry until you do that. Try to avoid quarter scaling, no x25% or x75%…
96 DPI should be a choice, agreed. But it’s a software issue when an app or a framework doesn’t display well on HIDPI.
Agreed! Not saying it’s not a software issue. Of course the software is broken. Of course I wish it was updated.
But, Framework seeing the landscape and picking hardware with known issues is a bad choice. They could offer lower DPI and eliminate entire pages of workarounds and half fixes.
Yes, high DPI should work, but it doesn’t everywhere. That’s just the reality, I wish it wasn’t.
Hardware should lead. It’s easier to upgrade the software to make the hardware work, then it is to upgrade the hardware when the software decides to support it.
I really hope that all Linux desktop software gets scaling support soon. Can’t live with only integer scaling increments
My exposure to Linux is pretty minimal, especially Linux with a GUI, so forgive my ignorance. Even reading over this thread I’m confused as to the issue here.
I don’t need an ELI5, but maybe someone can explain it like I don’t know what Wayland is?
My understanding is that an app should ask the system to display an object at X size, let’s say text at size 14. The system then works out that at the currently selected display resolution, size 14 will be Y pixels big. If needed, the system can scale that based on user preferences- a small, high DPI screen could render size 14 at only a couple of millimetres, for example.
Is the problem that devs are building things in a way that bypasses scaling? For example, hardcoding size 14 text to be Z pixels high?
That is basically the problem. Also that fractional scaling on Linhx generally still gives blurry results. Fractional scaling without explicit support from the apps side is very difficult to implement.
And yes, there are a ton of of apps that don’t correctly respect OS hints for size. Even more common among apps that aren’t Linux first, or are proprietary.
One of the issues at hand is that X11, the predecessor of Wayland, does not have a standardized way to tell applications what scale they should use. Applications on X11 get the scale from environment variables (completely bypassing X11), or from Xft.dpi, or by providing in-application settings, or they guess it using some unorthodox means, or simply don’t scale at all. It’s a huge mess overall.
It is one of the more-or-less fundamentally unfixable parts of the protocol, since it wants everything to be on the same coordinate space (i.e. 1 pixel is 1 pixel everywhere, which is… quite unsuitable for modern systems.)
Wayland does operate like how you say it and applications supporting Wayland will work properly in HiDPI environments.
However a lot of people and applications are still on X11 due to various reasons.
I have basically zero issues with fractional scaling with Gnome on Wayland, I thing you probably have something configured wrong.
Here’s a screenshot of how a few programs look for me with 125% scaling on my original framework display. The only thing slightly blurry is spotify but it’s not enough to be noticeable in normal use.
Edit: Looks like lemmy actually compressed my screenshot a fair bit but I think you can still tell that things are scaling properly
Ayy, beast in black! Saw those guys live (and barely knew them, lol). They make good music (their “beast in black” song seems to be my favourite).
😮i already was happy finding a new dubstep artist seeing that cover only zo find out that it was metal🤣
Are you into UK old school dubstep or the stuff skrillex made 10 years ago?
Hahahaha yeah, its power metal
You can launch spotify under native wayland instead of xwayland, it gives scaling without blur
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Spotify#Running_under_Wayland
this way works for all electron programs like discord, motrix
Honestly I might be dumb, but I don’t understand why I can’t scale any app individually to custom fractions. Why don’t DEs add this as a feature?
Is it that bad? I run gnome on two 4k monitors with 100% scaling and large text and it’s great
scaled by system/themselves … looks like those are x11 apps. why is firefox into this? run it as native wayland with
MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLANDNot necessary anymore with current version Firefox. It has Wayland enabled by default now.
Sexy
Thanks for the write up. I was in a similar situation with a 4k 14 inch Dell something, instead of scaling at 200%, I lowered the resolution to half at 1080p and it worked flawlessly. Maybe you could try it too?
The issue here is that some apps don’t support scaling, so they show in a lower resolution, making them look blurry.
Your solution makes all apps do just that.Nope, it wasn’t blurry. In principle, I lose some DPI goodness, but it didn’t make any difference to me on my daily usage of the laptop
Isn’t scaling to 200% the same as lowering the resolution to half? And you lose the high DPI for apps that support it too.
No, resolution is on layer display server (X11, tools like xrandr), while scaling is, like compositing, on layer window manager (xfwm, kwin, etc).
And you lose the high DPI for apps that support it too.
Is the dispkay 4k on notebook-size? 2k would’ve been enough, you don’t lose pixels if you couldn’t have seen them anyway, which is why everything was too small.
It’s called angular resolution.
Yeah I get the display server part. What I meant was that 200% scaling gets you 1920x1080 logical resolution on HiDPI applications – LoDPI applications continue to be blurry just as if you set your actual resolution to 1080p, but HiDPI applications will enjoy the enhanced visual acuity.
Even on smaller screens like the 14" ones, the quality of very high resolution (e.g. 4K) is still quite visible IMO, especially when it comes to text rendering. But it could very well just be my eyes.
My point is, that you don’t see HiDPI if it’s too small to be comfortably legible, could be normal dpi instead. On the other hand, a pal of me, that insisted on Windows’s scaling, reverted to UHD resolution in the end, because his 4k touchscreen notebook was always hot.
But ok, maybe it depends on other factors if you see a difference, like, on what is your visual focus, etc.
edit: wait, blurry? Then you used a different aspect ratio than your screen?
Just tried 100% + large text on Gnome, it feels much better than 125% scaling, thanks for letting us know it’s a possibility!
Gnome looks better with font scaling instead of display scaling, because the buttons and top bar are already way too large by default.
True!
How are you feeling about the Framework otherwise?
It’s all right otherwise. Not phenomenal, but not crap. The specs you can get with other laptops. The hardware feel isn’t as good as a Dell XPS or an X1 Carbon. The expansion card stuff is kinda cool, but other laptops have ports too. I’ve never swapped out the cards.
The main reason I bought this laptop is repairability. If that’s not your main priority, then I probably wouldn’t recommend this laptop.
If you want to use this laptop with Linux and not spend time fixing hardware compatibility issues, then I definitely would not recommend this laptop. Definitely get a Dell XPS for a Linux laptop that Just Works.
If you want to use this laptop with Linux and not spend time fixing hardware compatibility issues, then I definitely would not recommend this laptop. Definitely get a Dell XPS for a Linux laptop that Just Works.
Have you tried the
-frameworkimages from uBlue?Framework would be an instant buy for me if not the 3:2 screen. I’m not a developer, so there’s no upside for me
I just want the repairability
After spending a few months on the FW16, going back to a 16:9 laptop feels… wrong. Like there’s a ton of vertical space missing. Everything except watching movies benefits from a little bit more vertical space.
This has not been my experience with my FW16. I also have an XPS for work, and had a Gigabyte Aero before that, but I would hands down take the the FW16 over the XPS 9510. While the XPS doesn’t have any major issues running Linux (though I am unhappy with the trackpad), I haven’t had any issues running Linux on the FW16 either, and I absolutely love having whatever ports I want available. I really missed the great port selection I had on the Aero, which made the XPS painful for me to use (I am so sick of dongles). I use my FW16 for a bunch of different requirements and have a ton of ports for it: ( 4x Ethernet, 3x USB-A, 3x USB-C, 2x HDMI, 2x DP, 2x MicroSD, 2x 3.5mm). Being able to reconfigure on the fly for whatever my workflow is for the day has been great.
Also, something that really galls me about working on the XPS series vs. the Latitude series, is that even though the XPS is supposed to be the premium line, the Latitudes are much nicer to work on. For example, Latitudes have captive screws on the back cover whereas the XPSes don’t, and they also have razor sharp un-polished edges on the covers (always great to have to clean the blood off your motherboard traces before you can power it back on. )
As for the display issues, I can’t speak to that because I use Hyprland and don’t have a DE, but don’t see any issues.
Appreciate you taking the time, thanks.
I agree with pretty much everything they’ve said, though I’ve gotten more use out of the swappable parts. I have a desktop I use for things I need a powerful system for, but being able to swap in the GPU when traveling is great.
When I’m at home I have basically everything on USB C and the empty expansion bay.
When I travel I swap in the GPU and add an HDMI port and some USB a ports.
If you don’t have stuff set up like I do I agree it’s mostly just a reparability / upgradeability thing.
So hardware manifacturers need to adopt to XOrg now? LOL the reason that some apps dont scale right even on Plasma is that they are probably not Wayland native yet.
And GNOME still doesnt have stable fractional scaling, unlike Plasma.
Hardware vendors shouldnt need to adopt to GNOME too.
Woopsie
Last paragraph too
I finally stopped having problems on Wayland plasma after the release some months ago that included fixes to fractional scaling. Me after many months and years complaining about wayland not working properly now can say that I can barely notice the difference and things work as expected. Had to cry to make discord and zoom work for screen share amd zoom still crashes but at least kinda work. But that’s different than blurry fonts at least 😅
Wayland forced me to discover third party discord apps. Honestly I consider it a win overall lol
Agreed. HiDPI is the way to go and we should appreciate Framework for putting that in their laptops instead of continuing the use of shitty 1366x768 screens.
Xorg is the reason why OP is facing the scaling issues. OP, try to force the apps to run on native Wayland if they support it but don’t default to it. The Wayland page on Arch wiki has instructions on that. Immensely improved my HiDPI experience.
GNOME sucks, both in their community engagement culture, and actual look. I’ve never liked their culture, but they used to have a superior desktop IMO.
