Right on. Here we are, almost to five pages, and the only person who has offered up any possible solution to the scaling was me, the guy who administers Windows boxes for a living. The most we've gotten from the Linux people is "works for me.
"
And in general, you're quite right. If you install Linux and give it an average home Windows user, and it goes well, you're in business. But if you have real issues, they're not the kind of thing those folks are going to tackle.
To be fair, this is a Windows (11) community - and only some of us happen to have some level of expertise with Linux distros - but there's no Linux section to ask/answer specific questions (while this topic sounds more like a Linux vs Windows debate). Not to mention - Linux per se.... is just the kernel - as in: there's dozens upon dozens of Linux distributions - each using a specific kernel (older for stability - newer for better support of modern/latest hardware) - and working in a specific way (different package manager, different desktop environment) - another way to put it: Each Linux distro has its own community.
Kinda like... XPForums, VistaForums, SevenForums, EightForum, TenForum, ElevenForum... i say kinda - cause some solution can be valid in multiple version of Windows - tho, some questions can be inappropriate for the users of specific communities (like - asking Windows 11 questions in a Windows 7 forum). That's definitely the case with - asking Linux Ubutu questions in Arch Linux forum (the Linux community with the highest number of users - who struggle with poor anger management - many young users too).
Also, blaming the Linux Kernel for display scaling issues... makes no sense whatsoever (that's like buying a laptop with Radeon R3 Graphics - then complaining about AMD and saying ALL their cards are awful - cause you can't play any game with modern graphics). Since Display scaling is primarily dependent on the Desktop Environment (DE) and the display server (Xorg or Wayland), rather than directly on the Linux kernel. That being said - Desktop Environments like
Cinnamon, XFCE, etc... are known to have some limitations with fractional scaling - since both rely heavily on Xorg (which is based on the X Window System - and was primarily intended as a network-protocol - the 80s version of a remote machine). Designed mainly with servers in mind - and outdated hardware (multi monitor support - was not a thing for most of its development - let alone 2K, 4K or 8K resolutions), accurate display scaling was far from being a priority:
- In the Xorg model, applications typically assume a fixed pixel density. They draw their content directly to pixels.
- When Xorg performs scaling, it often does so by rendering the entire desktop at a higher (or lower) resolution than the actual output resolution and then
scaling down (or up) the resulting rasterized image to fit the physical display. This is essentially like taking a screenshot and resizing it.
-This "render high, then scale down" approach leads to blurriness, especially with fractional scaling (at 125%, 150%). Since the original content wasn't drawn at the precise scaled size, pixels get interpolated, resulting in a fuzzy appearance.
That being said, if one wants accurate scaling.... at higher resource usage, one should pick a Desktop Environment like
Gnome or
KDE Plasma +
Wayland. Since Wayland was developed as an answer (the future) to Xorg's architectural limitations - with a focus on modern desktops:
-
Per-Monitor Scaling: Wayland compositors can handle different scaling factors for different monitors naturally. Each monitor has its own coordinate space and scaling information.
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Client-Side Scaling: Wayland pushes the responsibility of scaling to the applications themselves. Applications receive information about the display's scale factor and are expected to render their content accordingly, resulting in sharp, pixel-perfect scaling.
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Fractional Scaling Done Right: Wayland enables true fractional scaling where the compositor can tell an application, for example, "render yourself at 1.5x," and the application renders its UI elements at that precise scale.
