Re:The X-Windows Disaster (1994)
by fsh on Thursday March 05, 2020 @03:48PM
(#22498042)
Legacy applications are somewhat blurry when moved from high-dpi to low-dpi, but anything modern works perfectly well. In my experience, X with current gnome or KDE is completely unusable in the same scenario. Either everything is huge on the low-dpi screen, or tiny on the high-dpi screen.
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There is a third option: xrandr lets you choose different resolutions per-screen. Nothing ends up too large or too small, you just don't get the benefit of the high-dpi screen.
This makes it completely pointless to even have a high-dpi screen. I think it is a pretty common use-case to have a new 4K monitor together with older FHD ones, or a high-dpi laptop with a low-dpi external screen. X really shows its age in relying on everything having roughly the same pixel density.
Not completely; I do this while docked and the laptop screen is further away, when high-dpi doesn't matter as much, and go full-res when mobile.
> or a high-dpi laptop with a low-dpi external screen
Yep, that's where I am right now, which is why I wanted to mention the third option - our IT support people upgrading everyone's laptops didn't even know this could be done.