> Last time I tried, Linux could not do proper fractional scaling. I use 4k 27" displays and wish to use 1.5x scaling. macOS does it perfectly, Windows does it perfectly. Linux does all kinds of shitty stuff. Never could get it working properly. You either get blurry scaling or screen tearing and shit.

This is a bit of a workaround, but I've been using it for close to 5 years on Gnome / Ubuntu with a lot of success:

You can install gnome-tweaks, and modify the text scaling factor to fractional numbers (ex: I have it set to 1.4 on a 2560x1400 14" screen). The vast majority of applications use this to scale both text, and icons (chrome, terminal, file editor, desktop, etc).

And I realize as I type this that it's a "workaround", which kind of reiterates your point about it being difficult to use. That said, I personally feel like macOS has similar issues (docker, desktop handling, slightly.. different bash tools, etc), and a lot of it is a matter of using something you're not used to.