Switch default desktop to Gnome

Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by worklogin on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:06PM (#8358251)

http://segfault.linuxmint.com/2014/03/hi-dpi-support-for-cin...

This is from March.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by wlesieutre on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:23PM (#8358355)

Is it really only integer scaling? Bit of a bummer if so. I'd have hoped they'd design arbitrary scales into this or it'll be stuck behind Windows and OS X for potentially a long time (until someone fixes it and all of the 3rd party software is updated to work right at other scales).

I run my Windows computer at 1.5 scale, which gives me sharp but readable text and a whole ton of screen real estate.

Who wants to buy an expensive 28" 4K screen and either choose between huge interface with 1080p effective resolution or an unusably tiny interface at native 4K?

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by JoshTriplett on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:49PM (#8358534)

Scaling of arbitrary widgets is integer scale, but you can scale fonts by arbitrary factors.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by wlesieutre on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:57PM (#8358848)

Is "arbitrary widgets" everything that isn't text, including the overall layout of a window? That sounds a lot like Windows' "Change only the text size" option, which has been around for a long time and isn't a good substitute for UI scale.

Size of all of the mouse targets is as big a deal as the text; they need a middle ground between "impossible to hit" and "gigantic waste of space".

I'd just been getting in to Linux (via the LF course on edX) and have it dual booting on my old laptop, but all of my newer computers have higher res screens that fit best at fractional upscaling from the "standard" size of old UIs. Guess I'll keep working on it because I'm enjoying the CLI and playing around with a web server, but I'm now a lot less excited about the prospects of Linux as a Windows / OS X replacement.

Year of the Linux desktop...

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by JoshTriplett on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @07:14PM (#8358905)

The GNOME 3 stack does better than Windows at scaling UI elements based on text size; I'm successfully using a 1.4 or 1.5x scale on a 2560x1440 14" screen, and none of the UI elements look too small to me. Off the top of my head, I think the main elements that DPI-based font-size scaling doesn't scale are raster images (for which HiDPI allows supplying alternate high-res images similar to CSS) and cairo-based drawing elements (see cairo's "device-scale" support).

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by adamors on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @04:58PM (#8358194)

Doesn't KDE?

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by jeorgun on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:03PM (#8358232)

Not really. It sort of side-steps the issue by having extremely configurable icon, font, window, etc. sizes, but it has no real, OSX-style high-DPI support like GNOME does.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by _ZeD_ on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:13PM (#8358662)

You mean ... it has a better HiDPI support than that OSX-style configuration GNOME does.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by jeorgun on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:22PM (#8358711)

More configurable, but certainly not better. It's a major pain to set up, since everything (fonts, titlebars, desktop panels, icons in various contexts, scrollbars, cursors, GTK equivalents to the above) has to be set independently, and many things still aren't capable of automatically scaling at all, like checkboxes, anything using KWebView (like konqueror or khelpcenter) or Aurora themes. Some parts of (say) Amarok's interfaces completely glitch out when scaled past a certain point.

For this particular subject, my money's definitely on the "just works" solution.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by marcosdumay on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:24PM (#8358721)

Nah... It just sidesteps the issue by solving the actual problem.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by Crito on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:24PM (#8358724)

That sounds plainly better. Being pixel agnostic by allowing everything to scale as the user pleases will allow a broader range of users to configure their system as they prefer it. (Last I checked, OSX on retina devices couldn't even use the actual resolution of the screen without third party extensions... A problem I don't have in Linux with a high-dpi screen).

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by toll on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:01PM (#8358218)

Cinnamon seems to handle HiDPI well.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by fmoralesc on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:46PM (#8358513)

It uses the same technologies GNOME does.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by adestefan on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:43PM (#8358804)

Because it is GNOME with just a replaced shell.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by philsnow on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:28PM (#8358401)

hidpi support doesn't matter so much if you don't have any window chrome or widgets to speak of. minimalism has always served me well in window manager choice.

I hope with systemd it doesn't / didn't become harder to use a "brand X" window manager.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by fmoralesc on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:45PM (#8358509)

What does systemd have to do with wms? (desktop managers, yes, but wms, no) There will be more issues with the move towards wayland. Just yesterday I read openbox development had stalled, so it is doubtful it will survive unless someone takes over. OTOH, there are not many tiling window managers with wayland support yet.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by philsnow on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @06:45PM (#8358811)

I recall having to run gnome-settings-daemon even if I wasnt running the rest of gnome to fix some absurd issue or other. I can see systemd easily "leaking" dependencies up the stack, making my life as a "fringe"/non-gnome user harder.

The people working on it don't seem to have any aversion at all to scope creep. In fact, the politics of it all make it seem like a "land grab" and they'd in fact be happy if systemd takes over more and more responsibilities.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by fmoralesc on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @07:25PM (#8358968)

> I recall having to run gnome-settings-daemon even if I wasnt running the rest of gnome to fix some absurd issue or other.

Sure, that is the typical cost of using a patched up desktop environment instead of a full DE. A wm is just a wm.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by gtaylor on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:41PM (#8358480)

> hidpi support doesn't matter so much if you don't have any window chrome or widgets to speak of.

But if you do, it stinks. Gnome isn't my favorite DE, but it's probably a safer default for a very general-purpose distro. You can always switch to XFCE if you care.

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Re:Switch default desktop to Gnome by comex on Tuesday September 23, 2014 @05:42PM (#8358490)

Since "desktop environment" includes some core applications each comes with, it's not just about the window manager's chrome.

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