For context, I have (currently) a precision 5520 laptop;
I run arch with sway, I have a big USB-C 4k at work and 2*16:10 FHD Dell USB-C monitors at home.
The only issues I have with linux is that I don't have Microsoft Office, and Zoom+Wayland is buggy as hell.
X11 apps do that. Firefox can run in Wayland mode, so run it in Wayland mode. vscode and other electron apps do not support wayland yet, so until they do (yes, they are taking their sweet time), you either need to run with integer scaling, or tolerate them being blurry.
In Windows, the shittyness is much worse. Basically any Qt app is unusable with hidpi in Windows.
In my experience, it isn’t. On my setup (200% + 100% screens, Retina MacBook Pro in Boot Camp) KeePassXC, qBitTorrent, Qt Designer all look great on both screens; VLC has slightly weird fonts on the HiDPI screen but still works fine.
Use the closest integer scaling and adjust default font sizes (and if needed other sizes like window title height or panel height).
It's also best if you just don't buy monitors that have dpis that are not close to integer multiples of 96.
Maybe I should try 2x gui scaling and 0.75 font size? Never occured to me that I could go below 1 on the scales, it might work.
edit: 2x on wayland is still blurry. 1x + 2x font works but as I said, tiny buttons and stuff.
Still, my point is; why the fuck am I dealing with this?
In mobile where there is market, Google did it.
I stopped trying a couple of years ago (after I got a 4K monitor) to convince myself that desktop Linux is workable.
Linux for desktop = console
I have a laptop running Ubuntu and connected to my 4k monitor in front of me. Has an Intel gpu. I do not even want to use multiple displays, I’m gonna go with the external only.
Wayland can do fractional scaling but then VsCode, Firefox, Discord and whatever apps I tried became blurry shit. Firefox has an environment variable to fix it. VsCode has an experimental build and command line flags. I have no idea about Discord. I don’t care if its the app developers fault. It is just plain bad.
X11 can do fractional scaling but fonts are a little blurry for some reason and I have the worst screen tearing I’ve ever seen in my life. It is unusable.
macOS and Windows do this perfectly. It is not something you think about. Windows has some weird looking apps here and there but the shittyneas is not even close.